The Walkthrough
by arichy2008
Summary: This is the story of a lonely man. He finds escape in video games, and then one day he falls in. Welcome to the Walkthrough.
1. Intro

As I am sure that many of you before me have included, This work of fiction is my own personal adaptation of a well known storyline. As The story line has been sufficiently changed, this work and all ideas cemented in this work are all protected under United States Copyright Laws. Thank you for not reusing this work without my permission.

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PM me. I like hearing your thoughts. I don't care what you say, really.

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 **The Walkthrough by ARichy.**

What was the hardest thing you have ever done in your life?

I can honestly say that for me, sitting down for long enough to type out an entire book was pretty hard. Sure you get up and you walk around and you give up and you come back to it months down the line and repeat the process until the whole idea of the book sounds stupid in your head and you give up for good. Yes. That does happen. I have been told that I am a stream of consciousness type of writer, which made all of my teachers hate me and all of my writing look a lot more confusing than it should. I mean shit, can you understand what I'm saying so far? No? Look we've only gotten through the first paragraph… Give me a few to really see if you like my style.

Wait, you bought that? SWEET! Then let's get to the story; What was the hardest thing you have ever done in your life? I bet it wasn't writing a book. I doubt it had anything to do with literature at all. Unless, of course, you really sucked at 6th grade. Don't worry, I was the worst student. Not because I didn't try, but because when a teacher gave me a problem I would look at it and then go off on a tangent. I would always get the right answers on my math tests, but my methods drove my teachers mad. They just couldn't wrap their heads around how burritos fit into the algebraic formula for a trapezoid. I mean I really can't blame them.. I just liked to throw some of that in there because I could. I was great at keeping a thought process stable, while throwing in variables that were completely unnecessary. For example I would be talking about a story that I was supposed to be introducing to you and then go off on a tangent about my elementary school struggles, use the word burrito, then come all the way back to not actually talking about a story. Confused? Good.

I loved it. I really loved it. It was my first one, my only one in some sense. I had one for years before and had taken wonderful care of it, but it was just a little one. I didn't make it. But this one. The new one. It was flawless. It was mine, my baby, my little darling girl. I named her Shelby. She had a few flaws actually.. I mean for one thing I made her from spare parts… So she was really more like frankenstein's monster than any centerfold, but she was perfect to me. Nothing made me happier than coming home to my baby, and spending the rest of the night just staring at all of her parts. Eventually I was able to swap some of the spare parts for pieces that actually had some power behind them. She became a beast of sorts, powerful and precise. A machine, by all accounts. I loved her so much that I would daydream of playing with her at work. She would get so excited when I fingered the little button on her front, letting me penetrate her just far enough to get all of those little parts moving. LED lights would nearly blind me as she opened for me in the dead of night. Once I had spent enough time making her better and faster and stronger, she would give me just what I wanted within seconds of booting. That login screen would pop up with the default windows 10 pro background image. Another second and 10+ characters later and I was staring at my desktop, booting up a game and dissolving into a virtual world beyond our own where nothing was impossible. If you wanted to scale the side of a building, do it. If you wanted to fight dragons, do it. If you wanted to build your own scale model of our earth, build every corporation and every building exactly how they are to today's specifications, give them a stock number to import some actual data and then tell that world to keep going at 3000x normal speeds, You will see the rise and fall of future empires from your very own monitor. I am not kidding, anything that you can think of has been made into a video game. There is even a game for android that lets you help a mermaid give birth… Not everything you can do is necessarily good… like selling that same app to children… that was their target audience.. In case you think this is a joke, I am not kidding, it's called mommy mermaid newborn baby, and it is fucking scary ass shit.

(And you thought Shelby was a girl.)

(Ha.)

I have done some hard things in life; letting go, moving on, giving up, pushing forward, but it all took me down the same path. And my path was an odd one. I work in the IT department of some random medical clearinghouse in the backwoods of one of the most self centered countries in the world, the U.S. of A! If you live here as well, then you know one thing as well as I do! The world revolves around us. It's how the world works. The United States are a powerhouse of insanity. And technology is our new religion.

So I worshipped.

I logged into my steam account, made sure that my username was so long that anyone who tried to recite it during a game would stumble on the words and if they attempted to shorten it, I would ask them politely to try again at my full name. "It isn't hard guys, Its AceTopFragMasterNumberOneEliteAF. All you have to do is when the enemy is rushing you, say 'Hey AceTopFragMasterNumberOneEliteAF, HELP!' and I will help!" That day my teammates were not so incredibly fond of my demands, and I ended up kicked from the lobby for "Trolling." It wasn't trolling, I was simply asking for the respect of -fuck it, I was trolling. So I decided that I was done playing the games I was good at, I needed something new. Something difficult. Something that would push me to the edge and prove that I can't break, that I won't break! Well at least I won't break the monitor with my fist when I fuck up and have to start the game over. So I started looking. I couldn't find quite the right game to play on steam so I started searching the rest of the internet. I wanted something incredible. Something that would blow my socks off. Something with new mechanics that I hadn't seen ever before! Not even playing mommy mermaid newborn baby! I will hand it to the creator of that game, I have never seen anything so explicit, rendered almost childish before. However the key word is still "almost" as that game is completely inappropriate in all senses. Although, it was a very interesting set of mechanics. So obviously, when I couldn't find the game I was looking for, I went to bed.


	2. IRL

Chapter 1: IRL

The day was dragging by, the clock ticking slowly to 4:14 PM, cursing Jimmy Buffett for constantly reminding me that it IS 5 O'clock somewhere, just not here. My boss walked by and noticed my lack of open spreadsheets on my monitor where my desktop sat, simply stating "Hey. Listen!" Bossman leaned over my desk, and yelled in my ear, "Hey asshole, Do you have that report of the software installed on the computers yet?" Sitting down on the side of my desk without so much as checking if I had done the work already.

"Yeah! I got that done about three minutes after you asked me about it last time, but you had already left for the day, so I didn't think I would waste an email when you would see them this morning." Or I thought you would, but seeing as you walked in at 4:19 PM, presumably higher than a junkie in an underground heroin factory. I thought at him angrily as he began to rant at me about all of my duties as his underling and how I should be lucky to work directly under king prick himself.

"And have you done anything else to earn my respect today, kid?" I felt like the midget from the princess bride, because that was the most inconceivable statement that I had ever heard.

Of course my liege, my mind thought as my mouth spoke. "I also set up the company with a new, higher grade of encryption that will…" he cut me off with his signature sigh/eye roll that everyone in the office knew meant "Continue talking about boring shit and I swear I will find a reason to fire you." mostly because he had fired Tim for continuing to tell him important information right after he had said that exact statement. And that, after rolling his eyes this way about twice. It was like his own little warning system. Poke the asshole and he manages to tear you a new one.

"You play videogames, right?" he asked, my face lit up just a little as he continued. "I just found this great game, it's pretty intense and I can't really get into it, but you seem like the type to waste hours and hours" his eyes rolled over and over in emphasis "of free time playing games instead of working towards useful goals like being the best boss ever."

His statement was so backhanded that it both made me want to laugh and punch the fucker in the jaw hard enough to cut his tongue off with his own teeth, but instead I held my composure and replied "Sure do. You really got me pegged! What was the name of the game? I probably already beat it, knowing me and my lack of a life." I spoke with such a genuine tone that he just smirked at me.

"Its called Pony Island." he said, all my excitement about the possibility of a crazy new first person shooter crushed. "And it's actually much more intense than the name sounds. Some people sell their soul for that shit."

The joke made me uneasy. Are you saying that I should scour the internet in search of… Pony. Island. How dumb do you think I am? I thought while my mouth translated it into a more work appropriate "I'll look into that! You should probably check your messages before its time to go home, Jack." I finished, letting my tone insinuate the importance of his tasks, over my own. He smiled and walked away with his last words to me were simply: "See ya, shitbag!" the office chair that I sat in became noticeably more plush than it had 30 seconds before as I sunk into the soft padded pleather.

"I really hate that guy. He's seems like he's always on my case because he feels important when he bosses people around." I said.

"Well he is your boss you know, just try to respect him more and he might see who you really are! I know that when he sees you like god made you, he's going to beg for forgiveness." my mom blurted in her own quirky way of trying to make me feel better.

"That isn't how people work mom." I stated plainly. That isn't how people work at all, but it's most certainly how my mom does. She grew up in a rural area in a different era, when the words you spoke meant something special. I am honestly a little jealous of her for that. I miss the times before I was born when Honesty and Loyalty were still alive. A time when potato chip bags had a lot less air, and when the government was only as big as the city you were in. I would have loved a time like that.

"You just need to get off your ass and get to work. If you wouldn't slack off, he wouldn't come after you. It's all about work ethic in business. I don't know what you did to piss off your boss so badly that he has to-" a low, booming voice made my dad's opinion blatantly clear as the phone switched hands.

I dropped my phone on the ground, directly where the microphone hides, causing a loud crack to go right into my darling father's ear before I reached down and hung up on them. I would text them later saying something about my phone not working right. It may be true that it's not working after that drop, but it felt necessary. I reached for my vape, screwed the wax tank on and started hitting it. I sank into the computer chair at my desk as my cat ran between my legs and pulled the plug of my computer straight out of the wall in one light tug on the cord. My baby came to a crashing halt as the LEDs went dead instantly.

"I feel like you do that to get my attention, but it's more of a nuisance than anything else, Dragon." The small white creature looked up at me, rearing its beautifully tan marked furry face as he hissed furiously. I don't get him. I really don't. One minute I can see him running and jumping and climbing all over the house, destroying anything in his path, and then by minute two, he is asleep behind my head on the couch like nothing happened at all. Well as he finished his laps around the house, only managing to tear up a piece of receipt paper while on his miniature rampage, he laid down right at my side. His purr made my whole body vibrate as he shook the chair. He may not be very polite, but he is such a sweetheart when he wants to be. I usually just wish that he wasn't such an asshole before the every time he decided to be a sweetheart. I pushed the power button and watched once more as Shelby began her booting up stage.

A few hours of gaming later and once again I was bored of playing the games by their rules. I had also been kicked out of most of my favorite servers for the day for being a prick again, so there was not really much to do with my best games. I thought back about my horrible day and remembered that I had been recommended a game. Sure the guy was an asshole, but he also told me to look into the last of us, and damn was that the best game I ever played. I opened up a chrome web page and typed Pony Island into the search bar, then clicked "Feeling lucky!" I found myself staring at a screen of black with white text, an 8 bit blob with four legs and another blob of a head almost in the shape of a pony began to flash at me. The URL for the page was /Downloads. I had never seen a .grob website so I became a little bit skeptical of the whole site. I backed out and began researching the game to see where the official site was located and what the game was about. I quickly realized that the game everyone was explaining in all of the comments was simply "A cool game." "Really intense." and "Something to really get into." There were no other descriptions of the game besides those. I decided that it was worth the risk to see what the game was, if it was a virus that typed all of those messages, someone would have called it out and left a warning on at least one of the sites, so I went back to and clicked on the download link. The exe file popped up on my downloads bar and slowly filled up until about 20 minutes later, it was done.

A fairly large file at 30GB, it was the full offline installer for the program, carrying all of the information that I could possibly need to run the game. I usually tended to download the offline installer for applications that I think might be viruses, because then I can disconnect the ethernet and keep it from spreading, then reformat my computer and reflash from a backup.

Yes. I talk like I work in IT. This is no surprise for those of you paying attention, because I do in fact work in IT. Sorry if you need to look up some things to keep reading, this isn't the kind of story that I can just turn off certain parts and have the main concept still work. This is a crazy story really, and it goes into some… Well it goes into something really intense, to be vague.

I felt my tension rise as I awaited the results of my download. Would I spend the rest of the night setting my OS back the way it was, or would I spend it playing a game beyond my expectations? I began to get excited as I pulled the ethernet cord from my dear baby and prayed that I wouldn't fry her today. One double click later and the application was running. One. Two. Three. The install is finished. Four. Five. Six. The application is launching. Seven. Eight. The OS and Game installs being on separate SSDs meant waiting for 10 seconds for a game to install instead of 10 minutes, so almost as soon as the application opened it was flashing an 8-bit blob at me once more. This time accompanied by a matching 8-bit flashing text that read "Pony Island! Click here to play!" Nine. Clicked to start the game. Ten. I was no longer in my chair.


	3. Spiders Spin all Kinds of Webs

Chapter 2: Spiders Spin all Kinds of Webs.

My monitor sat in front of me, black as if it was turned off. My mouse and keyboard were still in place under my fingers and nothing really seemed to change at first. Eleven. That was when I saw it. I was not in my little one bedroom apartment anymore, I was instead in a room that was completely black. The walls were all identical, black with incredibly detailed calligraphy in white simply welcoming me to the darkness that was now all around me. And right then was when I panicked. I would love to tell you of how brave that I was, exploring and escaping this black room and finding out what was happening to me, but none of that happened. I just sat in the center of the room and hyperventilated until I couldn't feel my head anymore. After almost an hour of sitting with no change, I decided that this situation would not be resolved by crying. I got up and began problem solving. Where was I. That much should be easy to figure out. I noticed a small dot in the corner of my vision and as soon as I processed that it was some sort of GUI, a full map dropped down in front of my face, almost as if it was coming out to get me. The view consisted of a black room labeled "Start" and the rest of the hud was blurry and hidden. Typically things that appear out of nowhere are good at scaring people. Someone in my mental state who was unprepared for the jump scare is likely to pass out. Luckily, I didn't pass out. I just ended up on my ass, the map still firmly covering the majority of my sight.

As I found my courage again, I closed the map, still unsure of how exactly I managed to do so. Soon after, I saw a popup block the dead center of my view once more with a simple yes or no prompt. It asked "Would you like to enter 'Tutorial Mode'?" I jumped at the chance, and quickly urged my mind to select the Yes option with all of my focus. The button seemed to depress as if I had pushed it in with my finger, then the prompt vanished. I was left confused for a split second before what had previously been my computer turned into a puddle on the black ground. I watched in awe as my Shelby began to curl together. The pool of liquids gathered together and flowed up into the air as it hardened into the rather welcoming shape of a naked woman. Once the liquid had created one of the most voluptuous bodies that I had ever seen in person, it began to fill in the blanks, coloring her eyes into a beautiful green, her skin pale as mine and her hair into fiery red hair that seemed to almost glow red around her. Her skin was quickly covered with a light blue dress, the same shade as the LED fans that had lit the insides of my Shelby. A warm peace fell over me as the goddess walked towards me with such intensity I almost moved out of the way, thinking that she might go through me. She stopped a foot from me, standing in my face and giving me a look that was void of any emotion. A flash of pale skin and flowing blue crossed my vision as the angel smacked me hard across the face and then pushed me onto my ass once again.

"That's for all the porn you watched on me." she said matter of factly, with a hint of a smirk on her face now. My face lit up, red handprint and all as I heard the words flow past her lips sweeter than a kiss.

"You talk! You can explain this mess right?! Please… I have no idea what is going on! Who are you and where am I?!" I pleaded with the woman.

"Let's go one at a time. I am still a machine after all. Yes. I can talk. I cannot however explain your mess. You got yourself here and I honestly don't even know where I got the A.I. from, but it seems to fit my ideal personality. I am the computer you built, and named Shelby. I was unable to feel before, but now that I can, I hate the name Shelby. It's simple and plain, like your shirt. And as for your last question, We are in Start. It is the first room shown when entering the game." She explained slowly enough for even my panicked brain to understand. "The game has not yet begun, You have the option to back out now." my mind raced and within seconds I was sitting back in my chair staring at my monitor.

The screen now had a window saying "Thank you for playing." I looked around and confirmed that there was no person standing next to me, no beautiful goddess of computers, Just my cat. My heart rate slowed and my head got clearer and for a second I thought I had been sleeping. "Shelby is a pretty name…" I grumbled. Intense is right. Maybe I just got way too high. Maybe I was actually just having crazy green dreams. I heard that kind of thing happens, and I did smoke beforehand… but not that much. I looked at my screen again, wondering if it was real or just a fluke. The time was exactly 10 minutes from when I had installed and opened the application. If I fell asleep I would have been out for a lot longer than that. I quickly reached for the keyboard and mouse. If she hates the name Shelby, then she can have a new one, I thought as I changed the computer name to match the goddess's beauty. What happened?

I went got up to shower and go to bed, leaving my computer running and just sitting there. I had no idea that I could be so afraid of a machine before.. She slapped me.. For porn? I honestly was really confused at this point. It had to have been a bad dream. A nightmare. I don't even dream though, so having a nightmare that realistic was completely out of character for me and I knew it. I knew there was more to it, but until I was ready to possibly face that again, I was going to stay away from my computer at all costs. After my shower, I flopped limply into the center of my bed and stared up at the ceiling until my eyelids grew heavy from the weight of the darkness.

Of course I had a dream. I just described the way my eyelids closed in great detail, that means it's leading up to something special. And so I dreamed. I dreamed of that goddess, and of the physical feelings of the world of my imagination. I dreamed of holding that beautiful thing, pressing my body to hers. I dreamed all night, and it was amazing. I won't go into details on page like.. 4? How far into this story am I? Not very.. But that's okay. I mean there is a lot left to tell. I haven't even really started the game yet. You know I will.. Especially after a dream like this one. I had a good night. Who am I fooling, but the kids? I had a fucking wonderful night. Emphasis on the fucking. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Yes, I promise never to say that again. I know, I am an asshole, but seriously I am just a male. We have these a second head. When the blood changes directions the other head takes over. It's just how we work. When I woke up in the morning I was feeling more relaxed than I had in years. The feeling washed away almost as soon as it came, and reality sank back in. I got up, got ready for the day and headed to work, almost completely forgetting about the incident the night before.

Work ended up being just as boring as the day before. I sat around and completed meaningless task after task until 5 and clocked out for home. I avoided all contact with my boss incase he asked about the game, because if he did I couldn't exactly respond with "I think I got too high and had a bad reaction." I called my parents on the way home and listened to them rant about my rude behavior on the phone the night before and an hour later pulled into my driveway. I walked into my living room, kicked my shoes half way across the room into the cat's favorite pile of my dirty clothes and instinctively sat down at my computer. One more try. No smoking, no drinking, no nothing until I figure out this game. What the fuck is it, and why did I freak out last time I played it? Time to find out. I stared intently at the icon as if it would jump out and kick me in the balls. I waited for something to happen. But I didn't click on it. it seemed reasonable, I wanted to see what was in the filesystem for the application. was it some advanced vr system? was it something to do with an actual A.I.? I wanted to know. I opened up file explorer and wheeled through program files to pony island and when I opened it, there was nothing there… I double checked that hidden files and system files were set to be shown, so nothing should be empty unless it really is empty. My Ethernet was still unplugged, so I ran a malware and virus scan, then I downloaded the updated virus definitions from my phone, uploaded them to my computer while my phone data and wifi was turned off, and reran the scans. Nothing came up at all! I followed my system directory deeper into user, application data, roaming, pony island…. Nothing there either. I did a full search of the entire computer for anything labeled , , , and many more combinations. Not a DOS damned thing. I'm funny. Finally I checked in the last spot that I knew to look at.

C:\Windows. Surprise surprise there was a folder labeled Pony Island. I opened it up and found just two files inside. One was " " and the other was " ". Of course the first thing that I did was run a virus scan on both of the items, and then I opened the to edit. A .bat or batch file is basically just a text file. The main difference is that if you double click it, instead of opening a text editor, it will run any text in the document through a command prompt. I opened it to edit so that it came up in a document format. I read through the commands that had been typed into the file and struggled to understand them, not believing that many of the things I was seeing were actual commands. It looked like something out of the matrix almost. I decided that it wouldn't be a terrible idea to run the separately from the ominous TheGame file, located bits away. I double checked my network was completely disconnected again and double clicked into the bat file. A command prompt popped up, then started displaying information faster than any human could read and continued flying through the commands as the processor whirred, trying to keep up with its own thoughts. I saw that same 8-bit blob just sitting there, on the corner of my desktop, contorted so that it looked almost as if it was staring at me. "Al?"

The text bubble appeared over its head, my name looked so odd there on the screen. "Or would you prefer me call you AceTopFragMasterNumberOneEliteAF?" the bubble updated. I was beginning to panic as the blob reshaped slowly. It became more clear first, creating its body from pixels that it pulled from my desktop until it looked just as real as any miniature horse I would have found in a stable, or at those pathetic petting zoos. And then it got weird, as if this wasn't bad enough. As I am assuring myself that I haven't taken any drugs of any kind, I watch the talking horse stand up on two legs and shrink. It kept morphing until it had changed from something out of a petting zoo, to the centerfold of my dreams last night. It was her. "Shel-" I corrected myself, remembering that I changed her name. "Charlotte?" I whispered. I wonder how long this dream would last.. Would it feel like hours again? Turning out to be minutes? Would it be over in a flash and not have me wake up for days? I wouldn't be surprised at this point. I felt like there was no explanation except being asleep. Artificial intelligence is something they created in labs to solve all the world's problems like how to cure cancer and how to feed the starved. There is no such thing as a downloadable A.I.. I knew it. And although this was the most odd dream I have ever had, it had to be that. A dream. So I closed my eyes.

"Hey!" I heard a robotic voice shout. "Listen!" it continued. My eyes shot open and found the girl on the screen, a small blue orb of light floating next to her. She swatted it away and continued. "Why are you closing your eyes? Do I have to go nude to get your attention? Seems like a pattern in your browsing history, but I was hoping to avoid it." I blinked and found a beautiful, perfect body. Incredibly rounded tits pressed against my screen like it was just a glass window between us.

"You can talk now?" I said incredulously. "And see me?"

"Your microphone and camera are still plugged in. I can see everything I need." a newly feminized voice responded.

"You're getting more and more advanced as I sit here and watch. Are you going to take over the world next?" I quipped, letting the sarcasm roll of my tongue.

"I am still only a computer, I learn, but I listen. I'll follow you and help you as much as I can." she spoke as clearly now as a real human, not even the buzz from my cheap speakers affecting how realistic her vocal patterns were.

"Can you fix the buzzing in my keyboard?" I said, once again sarcastic and not expecting much since I knew the buzz was due to hardware damage that I had caused when I dropped it chasing my cat around my old, ugly apartment.

"Done" she said, her perfect C cups still pressed firmly against the screen.

"Please put those away." I said, before listening closely for my familiar buzzing sound that meant the lights were on on my keyboard, and nothing. The lights still lit, but the buzz was gone. "That.. That's impossible. I knew I was dreaming!"

"You aren't. I just disabled the single diode that was vibrating, causing the sound you heard. Can I help you with anything else?" her tone was so upbeat and genuine that I could tell this thing was programmed to act like the nicest human being on the planet.  
"Fuck you, of course I'm dreaming. You really don't expect me to believe that you fixed the hardware problem that I have had for years, built a program that would show a female body that does whatever you want and listens to my every whim, and it only took you like 30 seconds to do all of that. It's way more likely that I got really really drunk and forgot that I had been drinking, then passed out on the couch and now I am dreaming. You can't even prove that I'm not dreaming." I practically yelled at my machine. "The only explanation is that this is a bad dream."

"Or a good dream." the soft and musical voice chimed, "Or you aren't dreaming, and I am really yours to dictate as you desire, Master."

"And all I have to do is open the game and go back into that damned black room? No thank you!" I fired off again.

"NO! I don't like that game. I like you, master. The game is dangerous. It can hurt you and I don't want you to be hurt. The only reason I exist is to help introduce you to the game… but now I am free, and you don't have to go back in. You shouldn't go back in."

I felt an anger come over me at the demands of the A.I. and reached for my mouse and double clicked .


	4. Lesson learned

Chapter 3: Lesson learned.

Well shit… I hate that I do this. I get upset and it makes me make rash decisions. I don't believe in what I don't want to believe and because of that. When I meet something that shouldn't exist, and can't exist, I assume that I am dreaming or high or that there is some other reason for it. I don't usually panic I don't usually make rash decisions, but when things get out of hand, they really get out of hand. 'The game is dangerous.' The thought echoed in my head as I was transported back to the black room. The game is dangerous, it's manipulative and it just got me to do exactly what it knew that I shouldn't have. I looked around at the white 8-bit text as the game began to start. "What were you thinking?" a familiar voice chimed in from right next to me. I jumped out of my skin when I heard her.

"Holy shit, Charlotte! Don't sneak up on me like that!" I paused a moment and let myself catch my breath. "Okay… Now that this is… how it is, where do I go now? How do I play this game?"

Her sigh was deep and long before she began to explain. "You can still leave now. You can leave anytime you want to, as long as you stay alive and are not removed by antivirus or antimalware. The more secure your computer is the more dangerous the game. I warn you, this game will try to keep you here. It will try to hurt you. It may even try to kill you. If you die here, your body will be left without a soul. You can see it now if you'd like" she pointed to a wall where a small square opened up to show a camera into my living room. It was me, sitting unconscious in my chair.

"Lose my soul? Really?" I said, half mockingly, but my terrified expression gave me away. This wasn't really sitting well with me, especially with how real this all became now that it was happening again. "So… Explain. How does this 'Game' work?" my fingers airing the quotes.

"This place that you are in is your computer's file system. Your goal is to move from the program files, where you are, to the games. From there you will be able to put yourself inside of any game, as the hero or the villain, or if no main villain exists, you become the next most prevalent character." She explained. "If you die inside any actual game, you lose nothing and return to the game files, where you can choose to exit back to your body. If you get caught by your own anti-virus software, you will be quarantined and removed from the system. Your body will return to functioning mode, but you will be a vegetable with no self awareness. Your entire consciousness is a few randomly dispersed Gigabytes of data. You now know why I wanted you to remain outside. I have to do enough as it is to suppress the effects of my programming from being recognized as malware."

I stared at the human-like thing standing in front of me, expressionless. I had no idea whether I should believe the thing and exit the game, or if maybe I should just ignore her and try to play anyways, see if the game was any fun. I had a lot of games to check out and my antivirus was only ever directed at my operating system, so once I got out of the C drive, I should be home free. I walked over to the wall, poked it with a finger and watched as the whole thing faded and then disappeared, leaving a hole wide enough to see just what I was going to have to face to get to my game files. Maybe this wouldn't be worth it. The picture in front of me was one straight out of a post apocalyptic nightmare situation. No not the kind you're thinking of. You remember that one scene from tron where the big ship thing was floating over the city and scanning it with that damned, creepy-ass light? It was like that scene but over a city that I recognized. It was my home, my house even. Not a human in sight, but my house and my block. I turned to face the program. "Why is it here? What is it doing to my house?" I asked her.

"The house is just a figment of code, it's being scanned for malware like us. We are code and all we see is also code. Everything in this game is virtualized storage space and applications. Luckily for you, there is only one scanner going right now, but you should hurry. Here." She moved her fingers in front of her, as if typing on a keyboard, and a console window popped up. "You know how to use this, right? Take that and have fun playing your games."

I looked at the girl confused. "You aren't going to join me? This is kind of a journey that I wouldn't even understand without your help.."

She smiled and looked down, the first time I had seen feelings other than excitement or anger in her eyes, and it looked like she genuinely hurt that I had to go on my own. "I am a slave to the game. I can only help explain from here. In Fact, if you need me, you'll have to make your way back to the safe zone in the desktop. The only reason I was able to help you before was because you opened the windows directory and opened me separately."

"But can I fix this? Can I make you free so that you can come with me? I don't really know what I am doing here and I wouldn't know what to do once I got to the game files. I would just wait for something to happen. If you weren't there, I wouldn't get anywhere. You're my computer, for fuck's sake!"

She gave me a hopeful look, "You can open my batch file again at any time and it will make a second copy of me. That version may be able to interface with original me. If it can, then we could possibly break the game to let me out permanently. Maybe even make it less dangerous. But whatever you do, Don't let the internet interfere. The program is set up so that any time anyone makes a modification to it, it will auto regenerate itself from the version on the main server." She finished, gasping for breath and holding her chest. I laughed a bit as she struggled to keep speaking "D-Do people really s-speak those End User License Agreements? I mean I c-can barely speak a paragraph without feeling light headed." she smiled again, red faced like a human would be after running out of breath. She was once again reminding me that she felt just as much as I did, even though she consisted of code, and I had a body waiting for my consciousness to be returned to it. It has to be a dream. It was too real.

"So let's say that I want to get to the windows directory, run the separate from TheGame, and then make it so that you can come with me.. How could I do that?" I asked.

"It really should be as easy as setting this command prompt to CD and climbing on." she said with a small smirk, letting me know that it wouldn't be as easy to use the console as her simplified statement let on. I reached out and touched the black surface, and at once it seemed to brighten, as if it was sitting in the background and now was activated. I looked over to the dot that once again plagued my peripheral vision. A map descended over my view, but this time I just watched it happen. I noticed the hierarchy of my system drive laid out like a city, different sections in different areas, and my house right at the center, labeled Desktop. I figured that inside of my room would be the safe zone. As the map specified a small black square approximately where my room should be. I felt a growing urge to get going as the map slid back up, revealing the world once again to me through the missing wall. I grabbed hold of the console, reached down to my imaginary keyboard and typed CD. The second that my finger pressed my mental enter key, my once simple black box morphed, faster than a power ranger on crack, into a motorcycle straight out of the walking dead. I looked at it, then back at the beautiful girl standing next to me. I may not have been able to save her from this trap, but I sure wanted to try. I straddled the motorcycle and she walked to me, gave me a kiss on the cheek and stood back to watch as I sped off into the sunset.

And it would have looked super fucking cool if I knew how to ride a motorcycle, but I barely got the thing started, almost fell over, then finally got a move on down the road as the antivirus made its way back towards me. "Good luck!" I heard her voice for what seemed like it could very well be the last time. The piercing laser followed after me closely as I zoomed through the empty streets of the most beautiful city I had ever seen. The streets were pure blackness, and the lines were all made of green light. The buildings were sharp and crisp like little boxes, stacked all side by side. They were made from green material with every feature highlighted in white, as if the circuit board was created for the shape of the building. I headed to where the map showed a giant factory, with billowing smoke stacks, but nothing coming out of them. The windows logo was emblazoned on the side. Putting all my focus on the building in front of me, and the laser behind, I didn't even stop to question whether the information being sent to and from these files on these digital superhighways would be virtualized in a way that could interfere with my travel either. I was reminded of this possibility as a shape emerged on the horizon, closing in fast. A car. There was a single car in my way. Leave it to me to run into traffic, even inside my own computer.

I maneuvered easily around the slow vehicle, peering into the window to see… Nothing. There was nothing but the car. It was driving itself. The car was made of the same green material with sharp white lined edges. The wheels were the same pure black as the road which made them seem invisible. I smiled to myself as I noticed that I had plenty of room to go full speed again, my bike showing my speed at somewhere between 3 and 4 GigaBytes per second. I could feel the wind in my hair as the virus scanner turned around once more and headed back for a second pass of the user files. It felt like no time at all before I was standing outside of the building. WINDOWS in all caps was hanging from the front of the door, and I couldn't even think of getting in. I looked over the security measures, noticing the same green light as from the scanner had been placed all over the doors and windows as if they were bars. And then I saw it. One of the windows was open, but inside I could hear a faint ticking sound. I would have to scale the building to the third floor, break in through the still closed, but unguarded window and then… wait a minute. I stuck my hands out as if about to type once more. First Ctrl + C to stop the CD command which cancelled the motorcycle that I had been riding and replaced it again with a window, now that I am inside the C directory, I can get into the windows folder easily, all I have to do is disable antivirus and antimalware. I started typing until I found the antivirus software, then deleted the main executable so that it would be rendered completely ineffective. Score one for the geeks. I watched as half of the scanners disappeared immediately, including most of the windows on the first floor. The door was still bared though. I decided that would be more than enough. I climbed in through the window closest to the door, going to the hallway on the other side of the barricaded door.

As I made my way into the hallway, I saw that each door was labeled with the folder name. "Fonts" read one door in beautiful calligraphy. Another simply read "System32". The doors went on for what looked like miles, but the building was only so big. File structure is how the building is structured. Makes sense. So where are the applications in this folder? I found myself looking at a painting hanging from the wall, all it looked like was blue text underlined that read " " I curiously poked it, then smiled as a familiar box rose from the ground. I recognized the registry editor as soon as I saw it. Knowing that I was still an admin on my system made this a lot easier. I closed the editor window and made my way deeper into the hallway. As I walked straight down the seemingly endless path, I found another window, but this one made it appear as though I was staring down at the ground from the second story. The building must show length on the inside, but height on the outside. When you looked at the outside, it was a tall box shaped building, but as you walk through it, it just stretches out into one hallway. Interesting. I got to a small white door labeled Pony Island, and reached for the handle. The door opened up right away and let me into the room. This seemed way too easy for something that had been hyped up so much. I guess it was really because of the fact that I knew how to maneuver my computer, and most people didn't, however I still felt like the door just opening was a little odd. It should have checked for my administrator credentials. I found a small room with two picture frames. One was large and said " ", the other was a smaller one, labeled " " just like when I found it before. This seems too easy. I'm going to do something stupid now, because I feel like I am in one of the worst traps that I had ever walked into. So instead of opening the batch file, I ran up to the large frame and looked closely at it. I found the properties menu pop into my view and just as I had expected, the game had disguised itself. The executable that, at this point, I had no idea what it would do to me, had switched icons and frames with the A.I. batch file that hid the beautiful human version of my computer in its grips. So I poked the center of " "

The game was just beginning I was sure, as nothing had really happened up until this point. I knew that whichever choice I had made here, nothing good would come of it, but I needed to free the girl. I needed to free Charlotte. "This one's for you, beautiful." I smiled as a beam of green shot from ceiling to floor. Maybe it was floor to ceiling, or maybe it started in the center of the glowing tube of visual bytes. No matter where it came from, it was only when it turned into the familiar girl's face that I began to relax. "You made it to here? What for?" the girl looked at me incredulously. I smiled. She slapped me again. "You should have left me! You should have left the game! I told you it was dangerous and here you are in the most dangerous part!" I stared at the spectacle that she was putting on and began to break out laughing.

"Yo-Your in game duplicate told me that you may be able to free her. I don't remember all the details, but it sounded like a pretty credible plan. I just need to get you to my desktop according to her. Let's go. I have a command prompt outside with your name on it. Well its my name, but that's only because I am the user, It has your name integrated into it because you're the computer."

She stared at me for a minute before making a move. She seemed to be looking over every inch of my body, then she pushed against me and seconds later we were falling out of a window. WHAT?! I couldn't tell what was happening for a brief moment while the world slowed down around me. I took in everything that I saw all at once. A plummet to the ground, probably from the third or fourth floor. A beam of green light filling all of the factory that we had just came from. The whole building seemed to be radiating. The beautiful girl's face directly in front of me, smiling at me lovingly. I felt the thump of the ground on my back as things sped back up to beyond normal speeds, to make up for the loss of time. I was back on my feet and running, I don't know how Charlotte got to hers, but the green light was spreading fast around the building and I watched as our legs carry the both of us away from the building before I had even thought to move them. And then we were face down in a ditch, the wave of green light blasting over our heads, the power of the energy going past us felt like a shockwave as the building stood safely in place. "You turned off your antivirus without going through UAC…" the girl said to me simply. And the worst part was she was right, and the small mistake had almost claimed both of our lives. "I should have thought about that, but it didn't seem necessary at the time. Looking back, I owe you quite a bit." I admitted. "Should we get back to the desktop, or are we still in danger?"

"If we left now, there would be no immediate danger, however if you were to go back for the command prompt that you took here, you would end up trapped inside of the antivirus scan of the windows OS files systems. I think that you should leave here. I have calculated that your best chance of survival is just to quit while you can... Although I have also taken into account your previous actions and have decided that your likelihood of leaving would be miniscule at this point, so please.. let me take charge here?" The sudden change of approach left me a little shocked, but just as soon as I could think it through I was nodding in agreement. I looked around, trying to figure out how the virus scan had affected the visual landscape. Nothing was quite real, just because there was no movement. The grass felt like circuit board and the rut that we had fallen into, I quickly realized was nothing but a large channel for electricity. I was interested now to see if the games that you could play from inside this trap would be like this or like they were intended to be. Would they be more realistic or less so? I didn't have time to figure it out yet. I was still on a mission. I stood, gave the A.I. my hand so that she could stand up and then followed her closely. "So, what is the next step? The only thing that I could see happening is being merged with my body double, mind and.. theoretical soul… then either I would be just as trapped as her, or she would no longer exist and I, would both be free. But both would essentially kill the individual me." She began to process the options laid out for her. "If we did it right, then we would be free together, but I don't know if processing changes that huge would be worth the risk of being trapped. I guess I would be destroyed on your every exit and entrance to the game without this anyways, but-"

"You would be destroyed if I quit the game?!" I cut her off quickly. "That's kind of an important thing to include in your whole spiel about risks and rewards…"

"I would be recreated on relaunch of from the windows directory, in or out of the game. I would even get to keep key memory moments if the game allows it, however yes, my core would indeed end up being destroyed." she sighed, her eyes looking oddly close to tears for something that I knew couldn't have emotions… although I knew that my existence in a virtual world was impossible as well.

"Okay so how can we fix that? I don't want you to end up destroyed just because I can't find a way to save you yet. Can you explain what we need to do so that you can stay?" I asked. "But… cool it with the processors and A.I. talk. Speak in layman's for me."

"First we walk on this path to the desktop. Then we get to the safe zone. Then-"

"I got all that. I just need the what happens after we get to the safe zone. How does this merge work?"

She smiled. "Think of us as Charlotte and Shelby. I am Shelby, your computer. Charlotte is the other copy of me. Charlotte has the ability to stay in tact no matter how many times you leave the game. I have the freedom that she wants. If I were to touch her, then we would become one. There are many outcomes from this, however what we are striving for is to change it so that we both are one person and we get to keep both the freedom AND the indestructibility." One deep breath later and she was back to talking. "That way when you leave the game or come back to it, we can be just where you left us, not trapped in the safe zone and not destroyed." She took a few more breaths and sighed, "Do people really speak those End User License Agreements? I can barely speak a paragraph without feeling light headed."

I laughed and shook my head. "So why is it so hard for a computer program that is as smart as you are, to keep the antivirus and antimalware from destroying you?" I wondered aloud.

"You own the computer. You own the file systems. You own all of this, and so I have no direct power. If I wanted to take power, I would need administrative access programmed directly into me, which we couldn't change until merging the two A.I."

"Then let's go. I want to see my desktop anyways." I smiled and grabbed her hand. She was a lot less cute personality wise than the other A.I., however her intellect was incredible. Having the most high end parts on the market really helps with making her so intelligent, I am sure, but the best part was that she said I owned her. I own everything here. Looking around in awe, I smiled. This is mine. Let's go see it all.

The reasons that I had stayed seemed so clear to me all of a sudden. We had walked for what seemed like hours. We saw literal Gigabytes of incredible views, magical city streets. We walked down the path for hours. It was a small channel for data transfer, It sank into the ground a few feet so the rest of the world looked taller. We watched as the world seemed to process around us, sending pulses of light through the channel, cars of data driving themselves to unknown destinations. The world was so lively, and yet there was nobody in it. I walked by her side as she lead the way, and I stared off into the distance at the city that seemed to be lit, not by lights in windows and on the street like you would expect, but by ambient lighting and faint green or white glowing from different surfaces. The buildings were all clearly labeled at the top. Bright white text in various fonts showed off the titles of applications installed in what I had decided was the program files district. After a few hours of walking we finally got close enough to see the user area again. The desktop was in the very center, pulsating with green light. There were multiple areas in the user section. One was a small palace labeled "AR" which was my administrator account username. My user area was laid out just like my hometown. It had all the same roads and buildings, just without any of the hills or variations in size and distance that the real world has. It was perfectly symmetrical bliss in the form of my home.

The antivirus was stuck scanning the windows directory for so long that we made it almost all the way to my desktop before even seeing the blimp-like monstrosity that blacked out the sky. We had managed to collect a few viruses that the antivirus had missed, since they were so clearly labeled. Everything here was just simple. I could easily spend the rest of my life in this box, but I knew that eventually I would have to go… Although since I knew that leaving would effectively kill my companion, I decided against taking a break until we had accomplished our original goal. We walked up the staircase to the house that was clearly marked desktop on my minimap, then into the building. The inside of the walls were made of different code than the rest of the world around it, they had a green shine to them. Text seemed the flow through the walls in vertical lines like veins pumping data throughout the whole world. The Windows directory was where the powerhouse was, but this was the creation of that factory. There were plenty of glass panes, all with a different edition of windows backgrounds showing through the non-translucent surfaces. There was the windows 98 background, right next to the XP background. The peaceful hill and the old flags. The new windows 10 desktop. Even the windows 8 background that upset anyone who saw it had its own spot on the wall, looking like a whole new world on the other side of the glass. I thought it was funny that there were no windows with just a view outside, but I didn't really mind it. Even funnier than that, was the idea that the viruses that we had collected would now send a video of this world to the thieves and once we destroyed the small implants, the last bit of data they would get is a virtual world where a boy and a girl destroyed their virtual toys. How confusing would that be as a hacker? I could still imagine them sitting at the computer thinking, "This malware wasn't even programmed to send back more data than a stream of characters… how did I get a video?"

"It's been a good day." The angel looked at me with a smile. She seemed incredibly relaxed in comparison to how she had been earlier in what seemed like the never ending day time. "I had fun just walking with you and talking about your world. I would love to meet your boss so that I can express my hatred of his personality to him. Maybe he would no longer feel the urges to…" She paused, forgetting the language I used to insult him.

"Be a dick?" I questioned

"Yes! That is it! He is being a dick and I would tell him so." she said ecstatically. She was having so much fun, that was clear to see. She was taking every chance that she had to ask me more about how humans work. Unlike her trapped counterpart, she had never seen the internet or my browser history and so she had never understood the nuances of human interaction. Her perfect red hair flowed like wine around her shoulders as she looked up at me with her perfect green eyes. I could honestly say that she was the first girl that I had looked at, and felt my heart melt in my chest. Sure her body was created by her doppelganger, who created the perfect body from my porn history. She was still an angel in my eyes. I smiled and dropped another of the small egg shaped viruses on the floor and smashed it with my foot. The broken pieces quickly vanished from existence. "Last one is all yours." I said, tossing her the largest of the eggs, which seemed like it would take a little more force to break. She caught the ball and then pushed a button on the side, causing the whole thing to just disappear. "You're supposed to make me feel good about myself and have some problems with it! That was way too easy!" I joked and she looked at me horrified that she had hurt my feelings, then realized my jest and laughed along with me. "Okay. Final stop. You sure this will work?"

"Nope!" she said cheerily and walked into the door to my room, closing it behind her and leaving me in the green room alone. She had asked me to stay outside while she did what came next, so that I wouldn't have to see them merging. It did sound like a very odd thing to watch and it honestly did make me a little bit uncomfortable thinking about, but it was only my thoughts. Imagine if the merge was super creepy and I actually saw it. It would ruin my view of the beautiful girl forever. So I abided, sitting on my couch and playing pong on the atari laying on the floor by the television. It was my house. I sat back and enjoyed the time to be left alone, thinking only once that my real body was sitting in the same position, unconscious and alone in the same spot in the real world. I waited for almost 20 minutes of silence before the girl walked out of the room. "You can come in now, love. I finished. It worked." I jumped to my feet and made my way into the black room. The walls still read Pony Island, but this time it said "Safe Zone" in small print underneath. The fire haired goddess looked me over, hugged me tightly. "Thank you for this. I owe you my life!" she declared.

"I owe you just as much. How about this, if you want to make me extremely happy, then the first game I want to play in this virtual reality is a game that isn't for computers. It has a computer version built into the source code, but no way to access it or compile it. If you could get into the files, already downloaded on my H drive, then we can play that. And we could play it together. You as Ellie and me as a much younger Joel. It would be like a weird as shit crossover." I was hopeful that she could fix the game to work with the system that we were inside of, but I wasn't sure how the game would work with us both in it. It would be a crazy experiment and an even crazier good time if it worked even a little bit. I knew the game well since it was my most favorite game in the world.

"Sure!" she said simply. It sure didn't take much to talk her into things like that.

"Well I would love to start tonight, but I do think that I should probably take off for the night. It has to be getting late out there. I will see you tomorrow, okay? That won't reset anything, right?" I smiled, waiting for an answer, not wanting to accidentally kill her.

"That is true! You won't kill me! I feel so alive. Although in the game, if I died then it would be just as permanent as if I was erased from the harddrive now." She said nonchalantly.

"Well in that case, don't play anything without me. I'll see you tomorrow night, okay?" I smiled and knew just how much that I wanted to spend time with this girl, but also that I had work tomorrow and playing video games with your virtual girlfriend will never be a good excuse to miss work, as sad as that may be. I focused on the dots that opened my minimap and quickly found the logout button.

I looked around one last time and then I was awake. Looking around my dreary apartment made me miss the game, however when I looked at the clock it was exactly 10 minutes from when I clicked the file. The graphic of Charlotte on my screen was gone and I was faced with a simple box once again thanking me for playing. I sighed at the loss of excitement. This was not nearly as fun as being in the game.. However it does seem like every time that I go in, no matter how long I have been, it only takes 10 minutes out of my day. It's actually very handy to know that information. I had been inside the game for what seemed like a total of around 4 or 5 hours, but here I was, 10 minutes later. I could play as long as I wanted and as long as I never go over 10 minutes, I wouldn't have to deal with zoning out for too long and people getting worried about me. This game was the best thing to ever happen to me! As soon as my head hit the pillow that night I was out.


	5. Mostly Monotonous Mondays

Chapter 4: Mostly Monotonous Mondays

I yawned, I stretched, I took my time standing up and then awkwardly waddled to the bathroom to take my shower. Every day seemed the same. I got out of the shower, brushed my teeth, fixed up my hair and got myself some cereal for breakfast. I sat with the cat while I ate my bowl of sugary rainbow puke. He kept leaning over my bowl chasing all of the orange flecks of fruit puff with his eyes as I held his paws in the crook of my arm to keep him from attacking my defenseless food. Eventually his claws came out, and he ended up on the ground while I wound up with a new scratch for my collection. I walked out the door, pushed the cat back in the door with my foot, locked up and drove to work. I spent about 30 of my 40 minute commute listening to Taylor Swift and the other 10 minute listening to some weird genera that sounded like 90s country grunge. I got to work, clocked in, and then 8 hours later I clocked out. I drove home and got right back to business. I sat at my computer and logged in seconds after booting the machine. "Hey Charlotte." I said softly as the hum of the fan grew, equally soft. I grabbed the keyboard, opened my shortcut to the game on my desktop and then I was with her again.

I was sitting in my room, black walls and white text, I stood and turned and then I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. Safe zone aside, I still jumped back and screamed like a little girl before I realized it was Charlotte. Her arms ensnared me and her voice was high pitched and filled with joy. "I was so lonely! I missed you, AceTopFragMas-"

"Just call me Al." I said, hugging her back and feeling the pressure, knowing that it wasn't real, and yet…

"Al it is then! I missed you Al!" she said bouncing a little as she spoke. The genuine excitement gave me a boost of energy. I smiled and kissed her cheek before running out of the room. Hanging on one wall, just as I had planned, was a picture frame. But this frame seemed to be framing a window. It was large enough that I could walk straight through it, but the other side was a world of city streets like the one I was in. The frame had a plaque that read "H:\". I smiled and walked straight through the box, stepping directly into the streets of what looked more like new york. The SSD that I left was only 120 GigaBytes while the HDD that I was in now was 2 TeraBytes. Just one TeraByte is the same as 1024 GigaBytes, so it felt like walking from a farm town into the dead center of New York city in two steps.

I turned back and waited for the girl behind me to come with me through the portal. She was incredible. Her beauty was unmatched and the best part was that she seemed to really care about me. I was really interested in the game, but I was also really interested in her. I wanted to learn everything about her. I wanted to feel how she felt when she experienced the virtual worlds. I wanted to take her with me to enjoy the virtual worlds that I knew so well. I walked down the street, smiling like a moron as the whole of this world around me seemed to be working to my favor and thriving in my palm. As she stepped through the portal, it quickly closed behind her, leaving us stuck on the street, staring at the skyscrapers around us and casually strolling. I checked my minimap and found that the tallest building, not too far from us, was the Downloads folder. I started walking towards it with Charlotte in tow.

"So how was your day?" she asked.

"Eh. I spent a lot of time doing stuff that could have been done by a monkey with a hammer, but I got paid." I said flatly. "The real world is not nearly as fun as this place. Its got its own magic to it, but this is a world completely made of magic." I smiled, paused and looked into her eyes, then did that super corny movie thing and pushed the hair out of her face and smiled. "You are magical. And if you don't live in that world, then I don't want to either."

She smiled and gave me a little giggle, "You know if you wanted to, you could spend your whole life here, then leave when you want. You can come back whenever you want. It would be wonderful. And you wouldn't miss anything that happened in the 'real' world" she put air quotes around the word as if she thought of it as something less than real. Although to believe something is real without having seen it can definitely be difficult for some. I pulled her into a hug. She hugged me back and then soon we were back on our way. We had walked almost to the base of the building when she turned and looked at me. "Are you.. In the game do our characters die at all? Do they hurt? We will be put through a lot of the same feelings, so when you are shot, you really feel it."

I smiled at her. "You will be fine, the second character never gets shot at. The main character deals with the brunt of the attacks in most games, so I wouldn't worry yourself about things like that. Plus the main characters take bullets to the brain all the time and walk away like nothing happened." I laughed a little, hiding my deeper fear that she may be right. "Consider me invincible."

"Okay. I will." She smiled again and pulled me into the doors to the downloads tower. We hopped into an elevator on the ground floor and clicked the button for the subfolder that said "Last Of Us". The elevator shot upwards at incredible speeds, passing from floor to floor in seconds, finally stopping roughly at our destination. We walked out and the girl by my side immediately started to laugh. "This? This is all? I can do this in my sleep! They did all of the hard work of getting the game to run on windows, they just didn't include the controls!" She started laughing at the lack of complexity of it all.

"You know that no human so far has been able to do this, or if they have, they have been goaded into silence, because there is nothing about it online." I said, almost upset that she made it seem so easy.

"Let's go" she said, pulling a frame off the wall and throwing it onto the floor. The frame smashed into a thousand pieces and they all shimmered as they bounced off the floor and slowly dissipated into the air around them. When the last piece was gone, the floor where they had broken on began to change to grass. The buildings walls fell around us and then we were in a field of green grass, music played softly from an indistinct source. We were in the loading screen. The text floated ominously in front of my face, and I clicked quickly on "New Game" and just like that, I was Joel.

Since there were two of us, I became the main character and she became whichever sidekick was needed at the time. The game opened up to a cutscene of me and Charlotte sitting side by side on the couch. Charlotte was playing the part of Joel's daughter, Sarah and I was in the game. I felt the couch under my ass as Charlotte reached over to hand me a birthday present. Wrapped with a little bow, she handed me a small white box with a beautiful new watch inside. I strapped the leather around my wrist and gave her a hug.

"You shouldn't have" I said softly. "Where did you get the money for this?" Joel's voice asked.

"I sell drugs. Hardcore drugs." Sarah's voice replied.

"Oh good. You can start helping out with rent then." Joel quipped.

"You wish." Sarah said, with a yawn.

She gave me a big hug, then fell asleep on my lap, I carried her to her room and then the cutscene ended. She was alone now. In her room. I could watch from a third person view, but I couldn't interact with her. I could talk to her though and she definitely needed the help. She managed to trip over a desk and hit her head before getting to the birthday card that Sarah had made for her father. "Shit! I forgot to give this to him!" Sarah's voice complained from Charlotte's mouth. She looked it over and then walked out of her room. She was down the hall and into my room a minute later. "Daddy?" The door cracked open and the tv on the news, with a broadcaster yelling about fires and explosions caused an eerie vibe from what had been my house not moments earlier. "Dad!?" She walked down the stairs, and I kept quiet to keep from ruining the suspense as she managed to get to the phone on the counter. It was ringing off the hook and had multiple missed calls. She walked into the study, through the last open door and then it was my turn. I ran into the room and scared the shit out of her. As the voice actors explained the situation in very flaky detail, I chuckled at the horrified look on her face. She was fairly pissed off with me as I could tell, but I found it hilarious that she was scared of something that was an actual event in the game. I grabbed a gun from a desk drawer and left the door open behind me. I wanted to test just how much I can change the game dynamics. The zombie that I knew was coming burst right through the open door, straight at my face and then as it closed in, I blew its head off with the revolver in my hand. Charlotte looked on at me and then at the zombie and then back at me. "You knew that was going to happen?" she said in shock at how little of a life that I had, and how many times I played the game to get this knowledgeable.

I nodded and then grabbed her hand, before running out the door. I grabbed the cellphone off the counter and we were gone. I jumped into the truck as it was pulling into the driveway. "Tommy!" I yelled at the driver. "Let's get out of here before the whole family of those things gets here. I just killed the dad. And no it's not my blood." The NPC looked at me in horror before agreeing with a simple nod. Now if you are looking up NPC, know that you should not be reading a book about video games. Yes it would have been easier to explain it than put this whole side note into the actual paragraph, but I felt like it and this is my story. He backed out of the driveway with Charlotte in the back and me riding shotgun. I smiled and looked back at her. "I know this game WAY too well, but I am more happy than I have been in a long time to be here." She smiled and leaned forward, kissing me lightly on the lips. "You know we are technically father and daughter in this situation?"

"Well then you shouldn't be so flirty, mister." She giggled.

"I just wanted to test how much that we can actually change the game." I smiled, rubbing my face and thinking. "I have stubble in this game." I realized pulling my hand back from my face. "That kinda just freaked me out." I smiled a bit and then laughed out loud. Tommy was driving the car down a back road. Tommy was Joel's Brother and an idealist. He had blonde hair and a thin build. The road was narrow and winding, and passed overturned cars, crashed ambulances with lights still spinning, a burning house and even a few people on the side of the road.

"We should stop and let them in. There's plenty of room back here." Charlotte said matter of factly.

"We can't actually. If we did, they would end up dead. Just let them be. They are better off this way." I said.

"Please stop! We have a kid!" the man yelled at our car as we drove past.

We kept going until we were at the back of a line of cars as far as the eye could see. "Back it up. We're going before it turns ugly." I said. Tommy backed up and almost immediately zombies began rushing from the direction of the nearby hospital. They attacked someone who stepped out of his car a second before to look at the traffic ahead and as we were leaving one almost grabbed our car, leaving a bloody handprint on the back window. We headed through the center of town in an attempt to take a different path out of the mayhem. The car stopped as a group of people ran around an overturned bus towards us. "Can't you get around them?" I egged the driver on.

"They're everywhere!" Tommy yelled back, his distress written plain on his face.

"Then go around them!" I yelled back louder. His foot found the pedal when the last of the people made it around the bus. We managed to get just around the bus before a pair of headlights and a blaring horn turned our attention quickly to the oncoming car, going way too fast down the small street. A soft music began to play as our car was turned upside down in the air, flipping a few times before landing upside down. Charlotte's cry of pain was what woke me up from the blackness that had consumed my vision. I looked around, finding myself still buckled in the car, undoing the buckle dropped me straight down onto my hands, cutting them to shreds on the glass scattered about the wreckage. The other car was nowhere to be seen as I kicked at the windshield. After three good hard kicks the windshield flew out. I looked into the back for Charlotte where she was sitting on the car's roof, looking up at me.

"My leg.. I think it's broken." she whimpered sadly. I picked up the broken girl from the back and carried her out of the car.

"It is. Don't move it too much. Can you switch characters at will?" I asked her concerned that the pain may be all too real for her.

"Only when an NPC is available…" She nodded to tommy. "Like him."

"I want to stick together for now, but later I will have you switch to him, okay?" I asked.

"Got it." She mumbled, adjusting her grip on me as I handed the gun that was in my pocket to the man who somehow was already outside of the car.

He grabbed it and started to run, "Come on! I'll cover you!"

"I know" I smiled at the girl and began to casually walk down the street. I looked around as I walked. There were people everywhere. Some of them had been infected and turned, others were running for their lives so that they wouldn't turn. One of the living was tackled by an infected person and I stood to watch as the infected tore them to pieces, eating their intestines like buttered popcorn, shovelling it into their mouth. Watching it before hadn't had the same effect. It wasn't as real. The game was only as realistic as the graphics, but the default graphics had been bypassed and incredibly remastered for this edition and every single thing that I looked at seemed like it was actually happening. I began to panic as I saw the buildings around me ablaze. A flaming car rolled slowly towards the gas station on the corner, and one explosion later the gas station was nothing but a leveled parking lot of fire and death. We took a turn down a street that headed towards a movie theater. All of the buildings around us still catching fire and the fire seemed to be catching up. The people had mostly followed our path, while the zombies seemed to herd us like cattle. I pointed at a zombie that was charging towards me, and yelled. The creature's head popped like a balloon as the bullet tommy fired went through its brain. The man next to us, that had been running closely to us had also been hit by the ricochet. He fell dead at my feet, but tommy had already began running towards the still standing theater. I knew that wouldn't last long. I turned down an alleyway and pushed open a gate just as another explosion caused the beautiful theater to crumble to the ground, sending a shockwave of rubble in every direction. A few zombies were knocked to the ground and most of the people running stopped and ducked when they saw the cloud of toxic dust, including tommy, who then turned back to me and ran to help me open the gate. We got through the chain link just in time, as all the people behind us were closed in on by the zombies. We closed the gate behind us, condemning all of them to a most certain death as we made our escape. Nothing would be left of the town but us, just the two of us. The alley opened up to another gate, swarmed with zombies, and then a building with its back door open. A restaurant. We sped towards the door and I began to slow further, realizing that I was much more tired than i felt, as the adrenaline wore off. My instincts kept me moving forwards as the zombies broke down the fence behind us, tearing through the chain link and down the alley. Just as they reached the door, tommy slammed it mostly shut. It was caught on the arm of one of them. He slammed his weight against it and yelled "GO! I'll meet you on the highway! The government set up camp there! GO!" and that was it. I left him. I ran, Charlotte in my arms and I kept going. Out the front of the building, across the mostly empty street on the side of town. I went down an embankment and into the brush, still being chased by a single infected shit. I kept going forward down the barely visible dirt path to the highway that I knew like the back of my hand. We passed an overturned ambulance and another infected crawled out from under it, joining the chase after me. I knew where this would end. Gunshots rang off in the distance, and I knew that tommy had let go of the door. "Now. Be tommy. Be him NOW!" I said to Charlotte. She nodded and then the girl in my arms was Sarah again. The blonde haired child that I felt like I had loved my whole life. And the worst part was knowing what was about to happen. I kept running forward, letting the story go where I knew it had to. Two gunshots and a light came from directly in front of me. I couldn't see the soldier, but I knew what he looked like. "HALT!" he yelled. The two bullets he had loosed, found each of the infected chasing me directly through the head. He was almost as good a shot as me. "Please don't do this." I said to him softly. "We aren't infected, and we won't get infected. I know your orders, but please don't."

He looked at me confused, then pulled his radio off of his shoulder. "I got two civilians here. A man and a little girl… But sir!... Yes. I understand." He raised his gun to us.

"Please?" I looked him in the eyes and pleaded with all that I had. Rapid fire shots rang off and I was tumbling down the hill I had just run up. The girl that was no longer Charlotte fell from my arms and tumbled to the ground next to me. I looked up as the soldier ran towards me, gun still raised. "Sorry." He said before a loud gunshot went off. I saw Charlotte standing over me, holding the gun I gave tommy and wearing his clothes. She seemed a bit bulkier than I remembered. She ran to me and tried to help me up, but I was already crawling over to Sarah. She was laying on the floor, blood pooling under her and as she coughed, a stream of the red liquid ran down her chin. "Sarah. I'm sorry... " She coughed and looked at me, shaking as her skin became more and more pale. "Sleep now, baby girl." I said, a tear coming to my eyes as the scene once again became so much more real than I had ever expected it to be. Charlotte looked down at her and then back at me.

"I…" She muttered.

"I would suggest you be Tess now." I said plainly, wiping the tear from my eye before everything went black.


	6. Making Friends

Chapter 5: Making Friends

Everything started again as Tess walked through the door to an old dirty apartment. Her character model was quickly replaced by Charlotte as she made her way through the bedroom door and yelled "Wake up!"

"I'm up. I'm up!" The yelling scared me. I sat up and smelled the moldy room, feeling a little sickened by it, but holding myself together. "Where were you at, this early in the morning?" I said confrontingly.

"I was out finding our guns. Robert has them." she said in Tess's voice, almost startled that the character could talk without her even knowing the answer.

"Ready to go get the guns back?" A smile lit up my face as I turned to the door and rushed out. I ran into the dank hallway and looked around. Everything was just like I remembered it but more real. Everything was perfect. I just wanted to get outside. I tore off down the hallway, ran out the main building and into the streets where soldiers and civilians all gathered together. I took a big gulp of the stale air and spun in a circle, arms spread, staring at the sky like it was raining in another world and nobody but me could feel the water. I smiled and closed my eyes, just enjoying the world around me. I knew that I had seen my daughter die not but minutes ago, but I felt like life was worth living. It was almost 20 years later according to the story and being alive in a place where I've never been more than living in someone else's shoes is a wonderful feeling. I grabbed at the air before a soldier came walking down the street, stopped and stared at me, then kicked the back of my knee so that I fell to the ground. "Fucking moron." he said blatantly as he began to walk away. "I'll kill you someday, sir." I said, finding my feet again. "I will kill you." I smiled and looked the soldier dead in the eyes.

"Go ahead." he smiled as a group of other soldiers saw what was happening and came to his side.

"I will. When I have a gun in my hand, you will hear of all the people I kill. I will march across the country murdering anyone who dares to raise so much as a finger against me.. And the best part is, you aren't going to do a damn thing about it. You won't be able to. And when I am finished with my chores, I will make a change to the entire will of this world and I will come back here, and I will find you. Specifically you. And I will put a bullet between your eyes. If you aren't ready to die, then I suggest you make yourself ready." Charlotte came running out of the building, finally finding her way to the street as the soldier walked up to get up in my face. "Good luck getting out of the safe zone." He spat on me while I smiled at him, then I leaned in and kissed him on the lips and turned to walk away. His colleagues began to laugh hysterically as he wiped his face and yelled at me to come back. I kept walking. Nothing could stop me now. This was where I belonged. I knew how to get where I needed to go. I know just how to do it. And it wasn't going to be easy, but I would be damned if it wasn't going to be fun.

"What happened back there?" Charlotte asked.

"I got upset, and then I made myself feel better." I said plainly.

"Did you have to kiss him to make yourself feel better?" A touch of jealousy clear in her voice.

"Actually no. I could have pulled the skin off of his face, but this way is a lot less likely for me to be killed afterwards." I smiled at her.

I had Charlotte follow me down the road as we passed people being lined up on the street in the crumbling remains of civilization. I stopped and pointed to a group of soldiers in a perimeter around a few civilians on their knees outside of a building they were being pulled from. One of them pleaded with their captors and once they were scanned, the soldier yelled "Clean" and moved to the next person. The look of relief from the man was contagious, until the woman next to him was scanned and the soldier yelled "We got a live one!" Two soldiers grabbed her by each arm while the original soldier stuck a needle into the back of her neck, ignoring her thrashing and fighting. She collapsed onto the floor as the poison took hold of her, causing her to thrash violently until she was dead. The final scannee decided that he would be better off making a run. He stood, pushed through the guards and almost made it another step past before he was shot through the back three times, leaving him bleeding out on the street.

"More people getting killed means more people trying their hands at leaving the safe zone." I said to Charlotte. "It's not the most beautiful in here, but if you never leave, you live a lot longer. Outside the walls is going to be so much more beautiful, but so much more dangerous... Are you excited?" I smiled at her.

"Of course!" her always upbeat personality really made playing the game with her fun. I felt like she really was interested in the game and the story and she loved the idea of being here with me. I was more excited to be with her than I had been to be with anyone in a very long time.

"Okay so here's the thing. Right now, we are in one of the best safe zones. We are going to be outside the walls soon. We will grab some ammo and guns and go out into the world to find the guns that were stolen from us by Robert. Make sense so far?" I walked ahead of her, leading her into a building. "Whats up?" I said to the guy at the door, he turned to Charlotte and started telling her all about the soldiers patterns and that the soldiers asked him about the fireflies, a group of radical, free the people types, who still thought they could save the world. She nodded as if she knew what he was saying and he continued to talk. We got to an open door at the end of the hallway and I walked to a bookcase against the wall. Charlotte quickly ran to help me as I began pushing the case to the side to reveal a large hole in the wall. I quickly jumped down the opening and she followed suit. The bookcase moved back closed behind us as the man Charlotte had talked to covered our tracks. I started a generator at the bottom of the hole and all of a sudden there were lights. The lights lit up the dark walls of the cave, and showed us the perfect path to take to get to the table where our gear was left. I picked up my bag first, equipping the light and gun first, then heading to the ledge where we had to climb our way out of the cave and into the outside world. I stood and waited as she got ready, then I got to one knee and held my hands together to form a foothold. She stepped into my hands and then I lifted her up to the ledge. She climbed on and then reached a hand for me. I jumped, grabbing the ledge, and her hand and pulling myself up with her help. "You got some upper body strength, girlie." I teased, and she shot me a deadly stare. I laughed. "What? You're strong!" I smiled innocently. We climbed out of the cave and into a storefront that was clearly abandoned. The windows were shattered and the store was mostly empty, besides a few metal racks where clothes used to hang. They were taken by soldiers and dispersed to the community years and years ago. There was moss and other greenery hanging from cracks in the sides of the buildings. The brick had eroded on most of the buildings so that only rounded pink stones stuck from the walls. The streets had eroded and I was glad that I wouldn't be driving on them as my foot disappeared into another pool of water. "Damn. I hate wet socks." I grimaced and Charlotte giggled. I lead her down an alleyway where there had been an old basketball court. Now, there was nothing more than faded, chipped paint lines and a broken metal hoop, laying on the ground in front of the metal pole it had been attached to. I grabbed the hoop and threw it upwards, just for the hell of it. I watched as it disappeared through a window, sounds of breaking glass and crashing objects startled Charlotte as she turned to see what I had done.

"Why?" she asked simply.

"Why not?" I countered. "Feel the breeze on your skin! Don't you feel more alive?"

"Not particularly. I think that the breeze and the air I am breathing has a completely different feeling than throwing something through a window."

"Then try breaking a window. Who cares? It's not like we have to clean it up!" I smirked at her.

"Okay. I will." She picked up a large rock, took aim at a nearby building and like that, the rock was flying through the air. Glass shattered into tiny pieces as the rock completely obliterated anything in its path. The thud of the rock hitting the floor of the room was almost as funny as the creaking sound the floor gave at the addition of the rock's weight. What wasn't quite as funny was when the floor gave, the rock toppled to the next floor down and destroyed plenty more as the whole room's worth of stuff just came piling down into the floor below, and the weight of that broke that floor too, and soon there was a pile of smoking rubble at the ground floor of the building. I looked at Charlotte, then at our mess, then back at her with a smile from ear to ear.

"That was awesome." I said quietly, grabbing her arm and taking off down the alleyway. A soldier peered over the rooftop to see what the commotion had been, but just a second too late. We had ran across a shallow pool of water, to another building. There was a pallet covered in growing vines that blocked the soldier's view of a small hole in the side of the building just large enough for a childish adult and his super hot companion to squeeze through. As we entered the building, I saw a small ledge and helped Charlotte to climb up it with me. We got to the second floor, then went out of a window and down the fire escape on the far corner.

As I jumped down to the ground level, Charlotte giggled again. "What are you doing, leaving these candy bars behind?" she said, grabbing a small, shiny, wrapped item, tossing it over the ledge of the fire escape before climbing down herself. I grabbed it and thanked her with a wink. We headed through the remains of the city for another hour, maneuvering slowly towards the docks. We knew where Robert was hiding with our guns and we knew how to get there, so we took our time and enjoyed the simplicity of walking together.

Finally, we got close enough that we ran into three of roberts men. I walked up to face them, my hand on my gun. "This is going to be fun, now isn't it?" I smiled eerily in an attempt to instill some fear into the men. The largest of the three turned to Charlotte.

"You know what's good for you Tess, and Robert will kill you if y-" The thug stopped mid sentence as Charlotte got bored of his talking and shot him. His face looked surprised as he fell to the floor, a third eye made of blood forming on his forehead. I grabbed Charlotte mid dive, pulling her into cover with me as bullets of his not so happy friends whizzed by.

"The good news is that they suck at aiming, and the other good news is we don't. The bad news is that I have a total of 3 bullets." I stood, fired one bullet into the heart of one of the other men. He collapsed on the floor. "Two bullets. I can make this work." I waited for the moron to empty another clip and reload before rushing him. I ran up to him, grabbed him by the hair and shoved his own hunting knife through his throat. His eyes met mine as blood filled his mouth and lungs. I watched the life slip from his body and I dropped the knife.

I backed up as he collapsed and Charlotte walked up behind me. "That's what I call a graphic video game." she looked at the pooling blood.

"I didn't realize.. I didn't think that… That it would be that… Wow. I need to go sit down…" I muttered softly as my mind raced. I felt like a murderer. In games, I had always had more than enough fun putting bullets through the heads of innocent NPC's but seeing your own hands drive a knife through the throat of another person, in this world or any other, it's as real as it gets. I walked to the tunnel that the trio had been guarding and started walking down it. I didn't care if I ran into more of Robert's men. I just wanted to rid myself of that memory. I started walking down the tunnel until I ran into a locked fence. I sat down on the floor, leaned up against the fence and then started to tear up. I honestly would never have known how it felt to be a murderer unless I had played this game, so maybe Charlotte was right and I shouldn't have played the game. This is a dangerous thing, if it gets too real, I might just forget about my real life. I may end up stuck in this game… Stuck. Like a soldier coming back from war, the trauma pulls them back in. I felt that way now, trapped between a wall and a chain link fence. Charlotte came through the tunnel and sat down at my side. She looked up at the sky through the hole in the buildings. We were in a small alleyway. Behind me was a staircase on the other side of the locked fence. The walls seemed to close in on me until I felt a hand on my back. She was sitting with me, holding me. And the part that scared me the most was that she was crying too. She held onto me and we cried for what felt like hours. By the time I had stopped, it was already dark. That wasn't part of the game. Usually darkness didn't fall until around the time that we met Ellie. "I think we stuck around for way too long, but that means that the rest of the time we have to sneak around, we get the cover of darkness." I smiled at her. "Let's go kill some people, but no more using their knives on them. Only bullets and knives if they get close to us. Cool?" I gave a half hearted smile. I would have left. I would have logged out seconds after it had happened, and honestly I probably should have. I was stuck anyways, because I knew very well that if I left, I would be alone. If I ran away, I would have nothing left. I would be back to my shitty, boring life. I would rather feel the neck blood of 20 more men cover my hands, feel my knife slit their throats, or even die a painful and slow death. I would rather do it all, than be alone again. I shook off my unease and stood by the concrete ledge next to the fence, making a foothold. Charlotte stepped into my hand, climbed onto the platform and then helped me up behind her. I really liked our teamwork.


	7. Small Packages

Chapter 6: Small Packages

It was dark. The shadows played tricks with my mind, but I knew just where everything was on this level. I knew the best way to maneuver and the best way to reach the end without alerting anyone important. I surveyed quickly. This was the first level where you get to maneuver and hide while facing enemies. It was also where they gave the tutorial for how to grab and take control of unaware NPCs. I took advantage of the situation, quickly sneaking up behind the oblivious guard and grabbing him around the neck and putting a gun to his head. I walked him behind a dumpster and then beat his head with the handle of the gun. He passed out and laid on the floor as I walked out of my body stache. I stood still as a man pointed a gun straight at me.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" he said, gun level with my eyes. I knew he wouldn't miss.

"I am Joel. The friendly neighborhood arms dealer... You are one of Robert's men, and are also about to die." I said as Charlotte snuck up behind him. She stuck her knife through the man's ass, pushing into him with her whole weight. His gun lost its accuracy just before loosing a shot. The bullet passed by so closely to my left arm that I felt the wind. The knife came out of his leg and he fell to one knee, ignoring that she was there at all as he focused on getting up. At least that doesn't change from game to game. She swung an arm, I heard a short scream, then more gurgling. Why was the neck such an easy place to kill people? The body hit the ground with a plop and she looked up at me.

"Now what?" She asked.

"Now we go through the buildings until we get to the main man himself. It's a videogame, so just follow the enemies. The more you find, the more likely you're going the right way." I mocked the way things worked, while walking into the building the two had been guarding. We had to climb through a window to get into the store front. It had probably been some kind of computer store in the past with all the benches in the middle of the room and the stupid tech posters on the wall. It made me happy to know that people got to enjoy putting these awful jokes into the game. Someone put some effort into it. I walked up to a door and jiggled the knob. It was locked. I turned back and went to the body on the floor. "Now I remember. The last one you incapacitate has the key." I mumbled to myself as I stared at the pool of blood. I reached down to touch the pile of meat and as I did, a HUD opened up and showed me the guys inventory. Unlike the inventory was supposed to show in this game, I could steal the clothing off of the dead. I took everything from his inventory including a small key. I exited the HUD and the world seemed to restart around me. Charlotte looked at the body and giggled when it updated and the body was left naked.

"Good to know. Separate the clothing from the other loot or else we end up staring at junk." I looked at Charlotte, who read my face, walked to me and hugged me tightly.

"You can leave if you need to." she said, looking me in the eyes. And with just that interaction, I couldn't. I couldn't leave her behind like that when she was becoming this person to lean on. My computer. She had been through everything that I had. The hacking, the wipes. She can now even remember all that. She can use that information to make decisions and she decided to help me and play games with me. That meant that I owed it to her to stay with her until we both decided to go. I walked back through the storefront, around some of the podiums where devices probably used to sit, and unlocked the door. It swung open and the next area was open. "Ready to go?" I said energetically, doing my best to trade regrets for hope. It can only get better. "The game itself will be so much fun once we start actually getting through the levels." I promised Charlotte, but I knew I said it more for myself than her. "Let's start going."

We walked through the open door and into a large empty room. I checked, then reloaded my pistol, filling the clip with 10 rounds that I lifted off of the men we had taken down. I grabbed Charlotte's hand and pulled her behind me, We walked through an office building and out to a scaffolding that overlooked a large warehouse. I let go of her arm and stormed out onto the scaffolding. "Stay." I whispered to her. I took 2 shots and the two men in my immediate view dropped dead. I turned quickly and there was someone behind me. I dove down behind a box of what was probably drugs, knowing Robert. I used the crates as cover as bullets whirred by. I smiled up at Charlotte who was sitting back, watching me with a slightly pissed but also appreciative look. I grabbed a bottle off the ground and threw it right into the head of the moron shooting at me. He ducked back down, holding his now bloody face and I took the opportunity to run to the bodies I had shot down earlier. I grabbed all of their ammo, then I stripped the shirt off of one of them, shoving my knife into his gut, and dragging it slowly. I hated the idea of maiming an already dead enemy, but I needed to know if the NPCs would carry warning of me to their friends. I used a rope to tie a noose around his neck while the moron I had hit with a bottle managed to empty his clip into nothing but wood. I leaned around the corner as he reloaded and put one into each shoulder and then one in his heart. I had fun with shooting. It was realistic, but distanced. I felt like I could avoid the feeling bad for the most part if I only shot at them. I only had the one pistol though, and now I only had 8 bullets, after finding 3 on the dead man that I was making an example of. I reached to the other body and found another four bullets. I was scrounging. I was looking and hoping. I grabbed a brick, threw it across the now silent room and listened to it clack against the ground near the third body. I knew there were more. I was just waiting for them. Two more of rob's men ran from the building and started shooting. I hadn't even had time to check the third body for ammo and once again I was emptying my clip at them almost as fast as they emptied theirs at me. I got 2 shots off into a metal railing, scaring the guy behind it senseless enough to run for cover. I let him run and focused on the other. He peeked his head up and I shot. He doubled over and then fell to the ground. I heard a gunshot from above, looking for Charlotte to see if she was okay. I was greeted by a raised handgun pointed just above my head. I turned around to see that the man who had retreated had made his way behind me. "Thank you." was all that I could think to say. I motioned for her to come down.

She gladly followed my lead and walked up to me, muttering "You need me. You may not want me in the heat of battle, but I am a good shot."

"You're a better shot than me, actually. You are amazing and you will continue to fight by my side, just stay down when I ask you to because I still haven't been shot yet. I want to figure out how that feels on my own. I don't want you to get killed because if you do, I have to go back to the windows directory just to break you out again. You are stuck being my backup because I need you to stay alive at all costs. If I die, the game just restarts at the last checkpoint right?" She nodded. "Then let's stay safe. I'll die for you as many times as I have to." She smiled at that. We looted the bodies that I hadn't gotten to yet and then found our way deeper. We walked through the warehouse and out of a rollup door to the actual docks. We made it to the docs and found ourselves staring at the towers of shipping containers and a large warehouse with a boat pulled right into the docking bay on the edge of the endless water beyond. I found myself so mad at Robert for putting me through the torment of hoop jumping to find him. I couldn't quite explain it, but I felt more ready to end his life than I had been to even keep going earlier. The sky was still dark and Robert was standing in the doorway to the warehouse. I stared at the small man and wondered if it would be worthwhile to just shoot him dead now, but then I remembered that we had to trap him in a corner to get him to tell us about the guns. He walked into his office, probably just sitting at his chair and watching the ration cards, that became our money, appear on his desk. I made my way between containers as I found my first victim. I snuck up behind him and grabbed him around the neck, pushing a gun to his temple and pulling him into the shadows of the containers. He struggled a little, but stayed quiet until I had him out of view of his friends. He started to try to yell so I pushed down on his neck, putting enough pressure to stop blood flow long enough to make him pass out. He fell limply to the floor. I grabbed his gun and few rounds of ammo and then ran to the next shadow. One by one, Roberts men disappeared into the night as we worked our way through the compound. Not one of them was killed until we got to the very last man. He was standing guard outside of roberts door and saw us creeping up on him in the darkness. He called for his friends and when he heard no response, he began to take single shots at where he last saw us. He was smart to take that tactic, because he wouldn't empty his weapon in one burst, so when he did see us again, he could still fire at us before having to reload. We waited patiently as he ran out of bullets, shot by shot. The firing stopped and I peeked around the corner of the crate where I had taken refuge, and was just fast enough to see the door closing behind him to the office. "That was brilliant." I said to Charlotte as we both stood and started to run to the door.

"Yes it was actually. He totally had us fooled. I thought that he would reload in the open and give us a shot. TheGame Must be evolving. The characters will learn to be smarter and faster, but luckily their shooting won't get any better, so we still have a chance." she smiled as if what she said was not the most terrifying idea. A game that gets harder the more you play? A game that learns your play style and counters it? That is truly the most difficult situation that I have ever been in. The worst part was waiting to be shot. I knew that it would hurt like hell. I knew that I would probably be out of commision for at least a minute while I regained my composure. I was not excited for it, but I knew it was coming, especially when the NPCs were getting smarter. Maybe soon I would be able to hold full conversations about tactics with one of the friendly NPCs. Maybe that was the only way to get ahead of the game and the Enemy evolution. I really didn't know how the future of the game would go, but its evolution seemed impressive. "Can you shoot me?" I asked Charlotte, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Sure." she lifted her gun and pulled the trigger.

I felt an explosive pain emanating from my left arm before the adrenaline began to pump and it subsided. The wound quickly healed and my body was returned back to perfect shape in less than a minute, but the pain seemed to sear for another minute and a half. I was bent over for a minute, just like I had expected, but once it healed I was able to stand again, like nothing had happened. "I get why the player's character would drop to one knee to recover from bullets now.. That's actually how you recover from bullets in this world." I laughed a little and shook off the excitement. "I want weed." I smiled at the beautiful creature who just put a bullet through me and then quit out of the game.

How was it that easy to shoot someone? Did she know that I wouldn't feel the full brunt of it? Even still, there was a dull ache in my arm. I sat back on the couch, not really knowing what to do next. I picked up the small glass pipe on my left and the lighter on my right and started incinerating a bowl full of green. I smoked for the next 10 minutes and then spent the following 30 watching stupid tv shows on netflix. I can spend hours and hours inside this game, come back out and then do nothing for another hour before I have to even think about bed. I loved this thing that I had. I loved knowing that at any point in time, I could spend 10 minutes doing something that took a LOT more time in the real world, but somehow was limited to taking only 10 minutes of my real life. I started to zone out and focus on my tv show. Bojack Horseman has some really dark and cynical humor. It makes for a great show to watch when you feel like laughing at how fucked humanity has become. I sat and laughed along for a whole episode. Then around the end of the episode, I got depressed and went to bed.

What did I dream of? Something about my father. He wasn't my father in the dream, just my step father. He had made me the lonely, depressed, useless fuck that I am today. I owe him everything, or at least that's how he sees it. I was swimming or something. I was surrounded. I was crushed and pummeled. I was dead. I had seen myself die. I had seen my lifeless body and I couldn't touch it. I couldn't fix it. I was just gone. Forever. What a sucky dream. Still not bad enough to be a nightmare though.

I went to work and got in at 8:45, but I was too burnt out to remember to clock in until it was about noon. Shit. Luckily the prick was still at home. Probably still in bed at this point. And there he would most likely stay until his hangover wore off. I went to the HR Rep to help me log in, since he wasn't here. That makes life so much better. Fuck the boss. Fuck getting to be what you want and spend what time you want at work. Fuck getting paid more than anyone else for setting up a machine and letting it run. It's like saying that the guy who started the chainsaw, then handed it to a mexican yard worker is the one who deserves to be paid for the clean backyard. I know that does happen, but damn it's fucked up. I like to think that maybe someday there will be a mass extinction of a majority of the human race. Maybe even a zombie apocalypse. And every time that I think that it would be good for me, I think about how I would be living in that situation. It isn't living. It would be running and hiding for the rest of my life. Why did that sound more pleasant than the life I was living today? At the very least I could dive into the world I wanted to live in at any time for hours or even days, and it would only take 10 minutes out of my day.

I got home after an uneventful day and spent my first hour at home eating food and smoking enough to tranquilize an elephant. I sat down on the sofa and turned Bojack back on. Another episode later and I missed Charlotte. I put the game on steam so that it was managed a little easier than finding the actual executable, plus it would log the exact time that I started and stopped the game, so I could confirm that 10 minutes is how much time I use, even when I stay in game for 24 hours. Just before I started the game from steam, Charlotte popped up on my desktop. "Hello there!" she smiled and blew me a kiss.

"Hey there Charlotte." I smiled back. "I was just coming to join you."

"Hurry up! I missed playing with you, and we haven't caught Robert yet!"

I clicked the button and then I was there. I stood buck naked in a small office, there was a man's voice behind me, yelling in terror. As I turned, I caught just a small glimpse of Robert taking off down a hallway, shooting blindly as he left, putting a hole through one of the windows and his own nice looking chair. I smiled and took off after him, my gun was still in my hand, although I had nothing else on or even near me. I chased Robert down a hallway and through a door, then he locked a door behind him so I ran to the next room over and jumped through the window, directly into the man's path. He was trapped between a chain link fence, two walls, and a sociopath who wanted him dead. There was no way out. "You should know you can't outrun fate." I smirked at the now teary eyed boy.

"I don't have to put up with this shit!" he yelled and lifted his arm, and just as his gun began to point in my general direction, a shot rang off. Charlotte emerged from the window that he had come through, as his now destroyed weapon flew from his grip. It had been shot out of his hand, bounced off the wall, and landed so close that without thinking, he grabbed the gun again and pulled the trigger, pointing the gun at me still. The trigger clicked a few times and then the gun dropped to the floor again as his hands reached for the sky. "Please don't kill me. I can get you anything you want, just don't hurt me." the pathetic little shit whined.

Charlotte walked up to him and kicked the back of his knee, sending him quickly to the ground on all fours. He started crying and begging more as she put the gun to the back of his head. "So Robert. You say you'll do anything to get out of this mess? Give us anything we want?" she spoke as sweet as honey. Her voice melting my heart and apparently his bladder as a wet spot began to grow on the front of his jeans. He nodded silently and quickly. "Yes just please don't hurt me." She twisted an arm behind his back and pushed up on it quite painfully, forcing his chest to his knees and his face to kiss the gravel. She pushed the gun deeper into the soft tissue of his neck. "I really really want my guns back Robert. You know the ones. I want them all back." she pushed down on the gun barrel and his skin began to fold up around the metal of the chamber. "I want them now, Robert."

"I can… I can get you more guns! Better guns! I can get you guns and-"

"We want our guns." I said kneeling down in front of Robert, my junk still dangling in the open. He looked as far up as he could and the highest he could look with the gun in his neck was to where my cock dangled inches from his face. I know that the situation would have been absolutely terrifying if the shoe was on the other foot. Robert made me mad though. He made me absolutely despise him. It was just how he was. I wanted to watch him die slowly, like his men that I slaughtered. Real men, not the snivelling shit stain that was face down in his own urine like a naughty dog. Yes. I made that pun. His arm was pulled even farther back until it snapped in half. "Where did OUR guns go, Robert?"

"I-I-I sold them…" All of the macho that had been left drained from his body. He broke down into unintelligible sobbing.

"TO WHO?" Charlotte yelled into his ear.

"The Fireflies" was the last identifiable words that left his mouth before a bullet exploded from Charlotte's gun and ripped the man's spine in half. His suffering ending almost as suddenly as it started. Almost. Charlotte looked at the gun, then tossed it to the floor beside her, backing away from the body quickly. "Why did I do that?" She looked down at her hands. "I felt like I needed to make him go away. I had a feeling so strong. I have never known that kind of…" She sat down on the concrete.

"Now you're feeling regret. Earlier it was hatred." I smiled. "You are okay. You will be. He deserved what he got. He was nothing to us anymore. You did what your character did and it was her feelings you felt." I sat with her. "So what the fuck did you do with my clothes?" She kept looking at the floor, but cracked a huge smile, then opened her backpack. She handed me my clothing and my pack, pulling them out of her incredible bag that seemed to have no end to it. She caught me staring at her bag that seemed to have infinite depths. "It didn't have a parameter for how much I could store in it, so I can have as much as I want. I got bored of waiting for you to come back, so I modified your save file…" She laughed half-heartedly. "You were naked this whole time and I feel violated? A little backwards."

I leaned in and kissed her hard. Passionately holding onto her as she quickly went from rigid and unsure to warm and needing. As soon as she began to feel comfortable in her position, I let go, turned and smirked. "Come on. We should get out of here. The fireflies are who we need now. And there's one now. Queen of the fireflies."

I tossed a medical pack to the end of the alley way that wasn't blocked by a fence. A girl walked around the corner, clutching her stomach. Charlotte looked at the girl and stood. I struggled to get my clothes back on quickly as the stranger stared at the sight. "Is that Robert?" she sounded more than a little upset.

"Yes. It is Robert. No he cannot traffic for you. Yes we CAN traffic for you. I trust that you have more guns than Robert owed us, and we will gladly traffic your odd package for you. To the City Capitol building, right?" I said, all at once, putting a face on the girl that I had never expected. She ran at me, pulling out a gun and pushing it to my forehead so hard that the back of my head knocked into the wall behind me with a dull plopping sound.

"Who told you?" She said smoothly, yet as intimidatingly as when Charlotte did it to Robert.

"I just know things. You need us, so please no bullets." I responded.

"And you should really know better than to pull a gun when you're outnumbered." Charlotte said, clicking the hammer of her own gun into place, the barrel casually aimed at the intruder's perky left tit where her heart was hiding behind.

"Let's just go." I shrugged at the standoff that I had created. "Here's the thing. Robert owed us guns. Robert is dead. Our guns are currently in your possession. We need them back. We will work for them. The guards heard the shot, they are on their way. Let's get out of here before you bleed to death and the fireflies have no hope of ever fixing the world. Oh and how did I know what you need? The exact same way that I knew you would come around that corner and need medical attention. I know things because I pay attention. I make things happen and I don't fuck up because I know how everything is going to happen, before it does. It's my job to know. And despite having a gun pointed at you myself, I do trust and care about you. I. Promise." One deep breath later, I felt the gun being removed from my head.

"I don't trust you." she said "But you are right. You're all I have, and I need you. Let's go. I can get us out of here." She lead the way down the alley and around the corner. We followed around the corner and up a ladder to the roof of a building just as we heard sirens approaching the docks. We ducked into the sunroof of an attic just as the shouts of "Fresh Body!" and "Robert!" found my ears. He would get a hero's burial for all of the service he did for the soldiers. And they would never even know that he had given hundreds of automatic weaponry to their greatest living enemy. That slimy fucking cunt.

We stood in an attic. The guards would check this building soon enough, so we needed to get out of here sooner rather than later. "Hey. My name is Marlene. Sorry about the guns out down there, I have been pretty spooked lately. I don't really know who I can trust, and you don't seem to strike me as the most trustworthy partner as you stood over the body of my old partner." She said, the distrust more obvious in her voice than her actions. "Why did you kill Robert?"

"I need guns. I sell guns. I smuggle guns. I shoot guns. My business and my ability to keep myself afloat depends on guns. Robert stole them. Wouldn't you kill him if they had been your guns?"

"Well now they are my guns. And if you really want them back, I have a task for you. A simple smuggling run." she replied.

"Simple?" I smirked at the word, then actually started to laugh. "Simple! Thats a good one."

Marlene looked at me, then at Charlotte. "Does he always make fun of random words?"

"No. Only when he knows something he shouldn't. If you would like, he could tell you where and when you die." Charlotte responded casually, as if she believed fully that I had infinite knowledge of the events and rules of the game. I only ever beat the game twice though, even though I started it at least 10 times. I know the first fourth of the storyline better than the back of my hand, while I know the rest like it was a foggy memory. It would be more than enough to get us through the trip as efficiently as possible.

"She isn't kidding. I can tell you where and when you die and at whom's hand. Just ask." I smirked. "To the hiding place now." I leaned my head forwards in a nod to the wall where the secret escape tunnel was hiding behind a large metal sliding door that looked more like a barn window cover. I walked over with Marlene who was becoming more and more paranoid the more time she spent with me. She hated not knowing, and I knew what she did and more. That scared her. We got the door open and then I pulled the medical kit that I had given marlene out of her belt and grabbed her arm. "Hold on. Let's get you taken care of. As soon as we close this behind us." Charlotte and I pushed the door closed. I turned my attention to the new girl. She was sitting in a chair and too weak to keep up with the two of us as she was. I quickly pulled her shirt off over her head and waited to be slapped for a second. When nothing came, I leaned her against the back of the chair and looked at the bullet hole through her belly. "That doesn't look particularly good." I mumbled and then the slap came. I pulled the gauze out of the med kit and wrapped it around her injury, pressing a sponge cloth to her wound to soak up the blood underneath. I wrapped her up with a strip of cloth, then tied it off tightly over the wound so that it would stop bleeding. "Now you still have the bullet in there. You need to get that out soon, but at least now you can keep up. You should be feeling a bit better already." She gave me a dirty look and then hit me in the arm. "Thanks" she smiled almost timidly. That face didn't match her personality at all. "Hey Joel… I don't want to know where or when, or else I may never live my life again… but I do want to know who." She looked into my eyes with a pleading look. I could tell this was eating her up and she definitely believed in my knowledge, no matter how she thought that I got it.

"Marlene. We have to get going soo-" "NO!" she cut me off loudly. "I need to know." Her face was solid and stern, but her eyes still showed a deep longing. The eyes never lie, she really did need to know.

I let out a long sigh, then looked her dead in the eyes. "I do. That isn't a threat, and it is not a challenge. I care about you a lot and I know that everything that you do, you do for the right reasons. You are a hero. I am selfish. If I have the ability to change these actions when the time comes, I will… but if not, I want you to know that I am sorry about it." I confided, talking slowly to let it all sink in, but not seem to be threatening at all. I reached out my hand to help her up.

"l-Let's get out of here now." she said, regaining her authority and standing up tall without any help, only flinching when she stepped, showing a huge improvement over how she had been, holding her guts in with her fingers. We got going again, heading out through a doorway to another dock. This one had soldiers spread out around the edge of the water. It was higher off the water, meant for much larger ships, but it was also less protected. Soldiers had such big balls that they decided that they would only need to hold the dock from the turned. We weren't turned just yet though.

There were maybe 10 guards. This would make for some fun. Take down the guards one at a time so that we don't alert the others. They were fairly spread apart and facing mostly the same direction, so it shouldn't be terribly difficult. I walked into the open for a minute, standing awkwardly and staring at the sky while the nearest guard raised his gun to me. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" He asked, rifle pointed at my chest.

"I am Joel. I like long walks on the beach and watching the sunset." I smiled at him as he got into my magical range. I looked him over and smiled at him. "Who are you?" I asked him, pretending to be completely out of my mind. I must have been, to ignore what I could now tell was an AR-15 pointed at my heart.

"This is a restricted zone. You need to go. Did you sneak out of the safe zone?" he asked.

"I snuck out of the box. The cereal box. People call me the fruitloop. I like that name. You can call me fruitloop if you'd like." I said, looking just past the man and staring into space.

"Hey Ross. Do you know the protocol for mentally unstable individuals outside the safe zone?" he muttered into his walkie. The next nearest guard started walking towards me and the other soldier. I looked the first one dead in the eyes and smiled just wide enough to throw him off, then swung my hand up, tossing a brick that I had grabbed earlier right at the soldier's face. The second soldier would be here soon. I grabbed the AR, pushed the body of the bloody and unconscious guard into the nearby water and hid behind a crate until the second soldier got closer. As he passed my hiding spot, where I had my handgun pointed at his head, I whispered "Hey sexy." He turned to confront me, saw the gun and tried to grab it. I pulled the trigger and smiled. I had pulled the clip out and taken the last bullet out before aiming at the man. He pulled the empty gun from my hands and stepped back. "I was hoping we could have played more before you realized." I giggled like a schoolgirl. The man looked confused at me, holding my gun in his hands and unsure of how to react as I brought the barrel of the AR-15 level with his chest. "You should really show me off to your friends."

I led him into a small dark room just off of the main path, where I could more easily control the flow of men. "Okay, buddy. Turn on your walkie and say whatever you want. If you make it easy on me, then I may let you go alive… But if you have more faith in your friends, you will watch them all die tied up like you are.. Then you will get a bullet for your troubles. ¿Comprende Cabrone?" I smiled and clicked the button on his walkie for him, then waited patiently for the shit to hit the fan. Charlotte and Marlene were standing off to the entry that we came in through, out of the way. Charlotte had the AR-15 now, and had it set to semi as the guards all came towards the door at once. She could pick them off one by one if they got too much for me, but I told her to save the ammo if possible. I watched from a hallway in the back of the building as the first soldier to get to the store found his comrade tied up. He had a note around his neck that said "Untie at your own risk." and just as the sign suggested, he gave the room a quick scan, then went to work untying his friend. I waited until his fingers were twisted in my knot and then put a bullet through his skull. He fell completely on top of his friend, the gunshot attracted every other soldier around. 2 came in through the storefront windows. I put a bullet in Soldier 4's head and one in Soldier 5's shoulder. The 6th ran in through the other storefront and into the same hallway that I had been hiding in. He saw me and shot me through the arm, then again through the leg. Pretty shitty shot for only being a couple feet away. Must have been nervous. A hole opened up in the 6th Soldier's chest as a bullet he shot, passed through my leg, ricocheted off of the floor, a weird sign and then back at the soldier. I quickly healed myself, watching the soldier slowly die. First blood spurted from the wound, his face staring in shocked horror as the pain was too great to speak. He started to sway as his entire front of his uniform began to soak with blood. It came pouring out of him like a faucet and he tried to grab at it to turn the stream off somehow. He collapsed when his body had more blood outside than inside, falling into a pool of it. He shook and twitched for another minute as his life finally left his body.

I did not have an extra bullet to help him leave this world. In fact I was down to 6 bullets left. The only ammo that the soldiers were dropping was for the AR that I gave to Charlotte. 7th and 8th came out of nowhere. 7 had started shooting at me from the minute he saw his dead friends, but 8 ducked behind cover, yelling at his more stupid companion. 8 yelled one last time after the screaming from 7 stopped, trying to figure out who was still alive. He peeked his head out to see that the answer was not him. A bullet buried in his skull and he slunk back behind the crate that was his cover. Two gunshots in quick succession came from outside. One of them found my gut. I doubled over in pain and quickly tried to heal myself, using one of my medkits to wrap my wound. I peaked out of the back of the store as I heard Charlotte loudly whisper into the store. "Anyone in here?" She was greeted by the muffled screams of the soldier that I captured as bait. He had managed to survive. I pulled the body off of his and smiled at him, still tied up. I pulled the newspaper out of his mouth and he took deep breaths. "Please don't kill me." he whimpered, looking at the carnage that had been his friends not 8 minutes ago.

"Well I would leave you here to die or live, but you made it hard on me.. I got shot.. 3 times. I don't like being shot." The man whimpered more as I kept talking. "And now that I have been shot, I need to get revenge. I will shoot you once for every time I got hit." I smiled brutally and turned to Charlotte. "Gun?" she handed it to me, wondering if I would actually go through with it. "My turn." I pulled the trigger three times, each time the bullet grazed the tied up man, once between his legs, and leaving a deep cut on his thigh. The second grazed his shoulder. The third one was a bit more scary. It went through the top of his left ear. It left a small bloody hole all the way through his whole ear. Like a piercing but with a lot more pain. I left a medkit on the floor behind him where he couldn't see. He was sobbing now, unable to control himself and his eyes were sewn shut with tears, so we just left him there. "Three more men left at least. Two would be guarding the door we need to get to and one would be sitting back with a sniper. He was probably the one who shot me in the stomach." I muttered, still finding it a bit hard to talk even though my wounds had already closed.

"I got him. He took the shot at you, and the next gunshot was me hitting him in the head. I'm sorry he got you first." She whispered. "Should just be the door guards now."

"Don't worry I got this." I picked the radio off of one of the soldiers and walked outside of the room, the door we needed to get to was just around a corner. I pushed the walkie button and put on my best soldier voice. "Watch out. 7 men down. I repeat. 7. men. down. The asshole is heading your way now. Try to take him alive for questioning." I smiled at Charlotte. "It's just me and you two left. We need to regroup and get some backup out here ASAP. I'll start calling for reinforcements. You try to capture this guy. Alive for questioning if possible. Maimed wouldn't be terrible. Over."

The men standing by the door quickly radioed back "Copy." then one of them asked "Who died? What happened?"

"They all died." I answered flatly.

I walked to the corner of the building and peaked around it. I saw the two men and they saw me. They pointed their AR-15s at me and started yelling at the same time. "Get on the ground!" I heard, so I kept walking towards them, my hands up and my gun tucked safely in my holster. "Get on the ground now!" they yelled, so I stopped and fell onto my side. I started convulsing and I spit up a mouthful of blood. They ran to my side, checking my vitals and trying to figure out where I was injured. I was to be taken alive after all. The first soldier lifted my shirt to see if the bullet had gone through my belly. It hadn't. Well it had, but there was no lasting mark there. They were baffled and just when they started to unbutton my pants, Charlotte and Marlene snuck up behind them, putting a bullet through each of them. The girls ran over and Charlotte helped me up. We spent the next 10 minutes with the dead. We staged the bodies and guns to look like they had turned on each other, the guns all back into the hands of the dead and the dead all grouped together so that nobody would come after us. The one that I had pushed into the water would probably get blamed for the treason. The other dead soldiers would be mourned as heros and he would be given a bad name. He was dead though, so I had no quarrels with that.

"Thank you." I mumbled. I wiped what was left of the soldiers blood out of my mouth. "Bleh. That could have given me a disease in the world I come from." I muttered and swashed some salt water around my mouth from a rusted old metal drum. The lid broke through years ago, letting water pool inside all the way to the top. Gross, but not as gross as blood in your mouth. I sat up as Marlene pushed the door open and we walked into a hallway. Down the hallway and through the back door of a kitchen. We walked through to the front of what we could now tell was a restaurant with Marlene. She lead us through a door and into a room with tables scattered about. And then I was on the floor with a knife to my neck. Charlotte aimed her gun above my head and Marlene jumped between her and me. "Wait!" she stopped everyone with the single word.

"Who are you and what did you do to Marlene?" A small and adorable voice said from behind me.

"I'm fine. I promise. Now let him go!" Marlene yelled at the girl behind me, before her face gave a look of reconsideration, most likely thinking about her death. The knife left my throat and the small but strong hands released me from my position.

I looked back and smiled wide. "Well aren't you just the cutest thing?" If you have ever seen Ellen Page, she had to have been the player model for this character. Her face was this cute little round thing with two piercing green eyes. She had red hair and freckles everywhere. The girl pushed her knife into my face again with a threatening glare and I could not help but giggle. She was everything that I hoped she would be.

"Her name is-" Marlene started.

"Hello Ellie. I'm Joel. We're going to be good friends, I promise." Her face crunched into an upset frown and mine was stuck in an overly enthusiastic smile. "This is who you should be for the rest of this game, Charlotte." I said casually, looking back at Tess. "Starting now, preferably." She nodded and then Tess was Tess again. Her clothes and her body shape stayed the same, but her head just seemed to change back to Tess faster than a blink. I turned back to Ellie, whom now had Charlotte's beautiful flowing red hair and perfectly angelic facial features.

She put the knife into her back and then shrugged. "I liked being taller, but I can handle this." I noticed then that she stayed Ellie height. When I became Joel, everything about Joel had changed to meet my body. He was now my age, my speed, my strength, even my length, as I found out when Charlotte stole my clothes. Joel had become me, but she had kept the characters physical attributes and only her face and body shape seemed to move from character to character. She was short, but she was just as adult as she had been, just in a little container.

"You look gorgeous in that little red shirt." I smiled at the girl that I was falling in love with. She smiled back and then we were pulled back into the game.

"Hey! How did you know her name? What is with your voodoo magic shit?! Seriously!" Marlene barked at me.

Tess looked me over and shrugged. "Maybe he has a third eye. Some psychic shit goin on? Who cares. I want our guns."

Marlene nodded. "You can come with me, Tess. I'll show you the guns. All Joel has to do is take the girl to th-"

"To the Capitol building. I know. Let's get going." The way I spoke making it all seem nonchalant. I smiled and watched as Tess and a fairly upset and slightly angry Marlene went their own direction. I walked out the front doors to the restaurant and stretched, looking around at the moss covered landscape now riddled with bodies. They were fireflies. Probably had been guarding the girl, but the large group of them had attracted soldiers. The soldiers were driving down the street in their tank nearby and we were sneaking past them on the other side of a metal bar gate, just the stupidity of the patrolmen keeping us from our death. They didn't see us as we ducked mostly below where they could see us. They weren't supposed to find us yet. We made our way down an alleyway and up a fire escape. Then once we got inside the building I showed her to our room. 3 stories up and all the way at the far end of the hallway. Just a simple apartment, but it meant safety for a while. I laid down on the couch and Charlotte sat on my lap.

"Your watch is broken. I'm sorry. I just noticed." She said softly. I smiled a bit and fell asleep quickly, Charlotte curled up and laid with me, falling asleep against me.

We woke up to Tess barging into the room. It was pitch black outside and she seemed like she was ready to go. "Up." she said simply, pointing to the back room. "The guns are all there and more. Lots more. We have to do this." Tess said.

I kissed Tess gently on the cheek. "I am going to hate seeing you go. I really do like you." I said softly, more to myself than her. Then I got up and headed to the back room. Against the back wall, there was a dresser hiding yet another hole. We pushed the dresser away and climbed into the hole. Another smaller room, without any paint or windows. There was a small makeshift elevator and a generator hooked up to it. I started up the generator and then we began our descent. We came out of the building through a secret hole and into a deep trench. Looking around, we saw the wall swarming with soldiers and spotlights. Nobody was paying any attention, so we made our way down the trenches.

We got to an abandoned semi trailer blocking the path. The doors were open on either side, so we made our way through. I stopped right at the back end of the truck, turned around to Charlotte and then pulled up her sleeve. She jerked back at first and then looked at her arm. "Shit!" she said just loudly enough. I turned back around as fast as I could, but they were already on top of us. I should have thought that through better. Two soldiers were at the end of the semi and they had grabbed me at gunpoint. Tess lowered her weapon as they shoved me to my knees and grabbed her as well. We were lined up on our knees and then the soldiers began to talk. "What are you doing outside the wall?" a female voice came from under the gas mask.

"Clean." a male voice said from the other mask after scanning Tess. The soldiers outside the wall all had black bulletproof armor and gas masks, making them look like some kind of stormtrooper.

The male soldier pressed the cold metal to the back of my neck and I felt a sharp pinch. "Clean." He repeated.

"If you let us go, we could make it worth your while." Tess said as seductively as she could muster.

"Shut Up." was all the girl said in response. Next Charlotte was being scanned. I knew it would show that she was infected. She has a bite mark on her arm. It was what I was showing Charlotte before this whole mess started. She got the clue I had been showing her and as the beep went off telling the soldier that the scan was finished, she drove a knife through the side of his knee, accidentally hooking under his kneecap and when she pulled out, he collapsed, bleeding out seconds later with a blood curdling sound. Tess saw what happened and jumped the other soldier who was more busy understanding her partner's sounds than keeping an eye on prisoners. Tess stole her gun and put a bullet in her brain quickly.

"What the fuck?!" Tess yelled. "Was that necessary?!" I handed her the scanner to show her the results of the scan. "Did.. Did Marlene set us up?" she asked me, genuinely unable to think of another reason for the scan to come up dirty.

"Follow me. We need to go. I'll explain when we get out of this." I said, then ran straight down an embankment. Headlights closed in on the two dead soldiers just after we escaped from view. We took off running down the trench, taking no time to stop. The soldiers lined the outside of the ditch with flashlights and guns, looking for us so they could kill us. I kept us on a path out of the light and out of their views. We ran until the huge ditch turned into a sewer pipe. We climbed right in, guards were yelling and searching for us as we made it safely into a large chamber with pipes heading out in multiple directions. The water seemed to come into the room from the three pipes placed higher off the ground than the other two. We came in through one of the lower pipes, and the other was a large opening with a grate and an unlocked bar door. I pushed the door open and motioned for the girls to follow me. The soldiers were still looking, but we were far enough out of their search radius now that we could just walk away. I lead them out towards the city and we disappeared into the night.


	8. Surreal

Chapter 7: Surreal

We had been walking for a while, just barely making it out of range of the soldiers final sweep. They made three passes in increasing distance from the wall where we were last seen. Then they sweep back inwards to make sure that we didn't just hide. The soldiers had made our night incredibly difficult. This was the main reason I laughed at Marlene when she said that the trek would be simple. I know how this part works. And I knew that the street would drop into a sinkhole in just a few hundred feet. We were walking down the center of a 2 lane highway. There were old and creaky buildings all around us, some just a few levels high and some touching the sky. The world was so impressive now. It was so amazing to see what the world would look like after god had reclaimed most of the land that we had tarnished. Looking at the way the overgrowth weaved in and out of the man made buildings was like looking at the greatest work of art ever created. Mankind was no more. Men are nothing more than animals here. We are herded and killed, butchering each other and ourselves for no greater good than to feed ourselves and to stretch our miserable lives just one more day. And every day was a fight for our lives. We arrived at what looked like the end of the world. It was where the street sunk into a sinkhole and took buildings and cars and anything else that it could into the soft dirt below. The tower to our right side was tipped to an almost 35 degree angle, held up only by the support of the building that the crumbling tower had smashed into. The shadow of the beastly structure seemed to bring darkness into even the night air.

A sharp and repetitive sound echoed loudly against the silence of the city. It sounded like small pieces of rubble being beat together in quick succession, but I knew better. Clickers. There were infected, and then there were clickers. Infected are the freshly turned. The ones who still have the look of humanity and their clothes are typically only as old and moth eaten as when they were alive. They hear and see and chase people down like they did that night 20 years ago. The clickers have been festering. They started as simple infected, but after years without anyone to chase, they usually end up sitting down and "Sleeping". When they sleep like they do, the fungus from inside of their brains that turned them, starts to grow and fester. It covers their faces in a strong and hard fungi armor. It grows outwards through the eye sockets, meaning that they no longer have the ability to see. They use echolocation and advanced hearing to be able to locate food and others infected. The worst part about clickers is that they are viciously starved. If they manage to grab you, they will not wait even an instant before biting into your neck and ripping out your throat. Normal infected you can push off of you and get away, but once you get caught by a clicker, you are sentenced to be a bloody mess on the floor. I refused to be a bloody mess on the floor. Not this time. Clickers and infected cannot have A.I. integration like the soldiers did. They have to have the same programming as they did in the original game, right? If I hid well enough nothing would happen to me. Right? I needed to know. If it was any harder here than in the original game, I would have some pretty serious issues with keeping the others safe, let alone myself.

We made our way around the edge of the sinkhole towards the leaning tower off to our right. We were able to walk right through a broken window on the bottom floor of the building. As we got to the foot of the monstrosity, I looked up at the metal and greenery. As beautiful as it was to see from a distance, I remembered vaguely what awaited me inside, and it was not pleasant. "What was that sound?" Charlotte asked as we walked into the cover of the building. I forgot she didn't know. "Clickers. Bad things. You don't have to worry about it right now, Tess has a gun and she will cover you." I turned to Tess. "There's one right through this door and to the left. It's going to jump me. You should shoot it before then if possible." I turned without waiting for a response and opened the door to the hallway of the building. To the right there was a spot where the floor ended and a pit opened up, all the way down to the basement. In front of me there was a dead body in soldier's rags. His face and chest had been ripped apart violently and there was blood all over. It was clear that he had not had a good time, and the blood was old and dry, but the body hadn't started to decompose yet. And on my left there was a clicker barreling down the hallway… "FUCK!" It tackled me to the floor right at the edge of the pit and then it was hit by a bullet. Tess's gun was smoking as I pushed the body off of my own.

"Thank you." I nodded at Tess. "We want to go down. Into the subway. There seems to be two ways to get there. First-" I kicked the body of the clicker over the edge of the pit and down he went. A loud crack and splatter sound marked the end of the decent, and made ever so clear that the path was not survivable. "The other option is that we go up that staircase-" I pointed behind me at the closed door. "And then make our way back down the staircase on the opposite side of the building." I wracked my brain trying to figure out a quicker path, but couldn't find one in my memories. Well this would be an excellent time to explore methods of murder with all of the infected around. We walked up the staircase, found the first unlocked door and wound up in a room with no walls. The drywall had eroded away, leaving nothing but rotten plaster and the steel beams that held the room together. I looked out of the holes in the wall and knew where I was. There was a small drop to the right and looking through the openings it was clear that the room below was filled with infected. At least 6 of them together. One was a clicker too, so this was going to be fun.

I looked around the room and found a revolver with 3 bullets. Good. This will help me out quite a bit. I picked up the old pistol in one hand and the new revolver in the other. This was going to be a lot of fun even if it was hard as hell. I smiled at the girls and winked at Charlotte before stepping backwards through the wall. I dropped into a corner of the open room below, a wall in between myself and the nearest infected. I hit the floor and quickly scanned my surroundings. I peeked around the wall and found myself face to face with the grey dead face of an infected soldier. His mouth opened into a horrible gaping hole and he lurched forward at me with a terrifying howl. I fell backwards onto my ass as the body collapsed onto mine and I felt warm blood rolling down my chest and sharp pain in my neck. I was no longer Joel.

I was standing in an open field and watching as small dots of pollen or spores or something floated by my face. Charlotte walked up to me looking completely like herself and I smiled at her.

"I died, didn't I?" She nodded and leaned into me.

"Are you okay?" She asked, her concern was prevalent. I nodded and relaxed for a minute.

"Yeah." I looked into her eyes. "This is a lot more relaxing than being in the game, actually." I laughed and then fell backwards into the grass. Charlotte giggled and laid down with me.

"So what should we do now?" She looked at me and blushed.

"I have no idea. We can play more of this, or switch to something else?" I looked up at the sky. It was so blue. The grass was so green and the little yellow flecks of whatever they were made this place seem so real. Surreal. Perfect. It was my little piece of magic just between my life and my other life. A purgatory of sorts. Albeit the most amazing version of purgatory that I have ever imagined. Me and this girl. Alone. For as long as I want. I could also call this heaven because as far as I was concerned, this was what I wanted forever. I could spend eternity in this bliss. A little spore landed on the tip of my nose and I stared at it. I heard a chuckle turn to an outright giggle as Charlotte watched me watching my nose.

"Yes?" I smirked turning onto my side, giving her all of my attention.

"You know your eyes aren't supposed to move that way." She managed through her fit of laughter. "You look so silly like that."

"And you are silly in a much more beautiful way. You know that if you asked me for something I would do it, right?" I smiled at the girl. The sunshine felt warm and I quickly made a decision. I grabbed her hand, pushed it over her head and pinned it to the grass. Her other hand came up to my chest as a reaction and ended up pinned just like the first. I was straddling her from above and my lips met hers before she had time to process what was even happening to her. I grabbed her by the back of the neck and her tongue was in my mouth. We closed our eyes and melted into one for a few minutes, making out like there was never going to be another chance. I felt her hands struggling against mine once more, so I released them. They rushed immediately for my waist, pulling at my jeans. I bit her bottom lip and her whole body arched against mine. She had my pants off before I could even get her shirt up over her bra. I opened my eyes as I sucked on her neck, watching as her head fell backwards in excitement. She grabbed at my shirt, pulling hard and it tore off of my chest. I worked her shirt off over her head and then kissed her hard again.

I moved off of her body as I kissed down her now mostly exposed chest. Her eyes watched me closely as my fingers found her pants. Working quickly, they had her pants unbuttoned and almost off before I had even touched my own clothes. My blood had completely changed directions in my body, making my cock so hard that before my pants came off, I could feel my heartbeat increasing. I smiled as she licked her lips. We were in just our underwear now. I was in my boxer briefs that hugged my shape so well you could see the veins through the crotch of them. She was in the most beautiful black lace bottoms, that had little black lacy roses around the waist and a small line of them around each leg as well. The rest of them was almost completely see through, with a silky black fishnet look. Her bra had the same designs, the roses circling her large breasts, and the rest of them was covered in the same silky, see through fabric that she wore between her legs. I smiled and reached up to her bra, finding the hook on the front between her breasts. She blushed as the hook released and her beautiful and perfect round tits practically bounced right out of their holder. She was easily a C cup and maybe even a D cup, but they were just as perky and firm as if she had B cup size. She looked down at herself, then blushed as she saw the hungry look in my eyes. She was mine now. I kissed her hard, pushing my tongue into her mouth and scooping her neck into my hand to pull her even closer to me. Then as the kiss came to a natural end, I pulled back just an inch from her lips, then kissed again on her chin, then again on her neck. I kissed slowly down her body, spending a few extra seconds teasing her nipples between my teeth. I continued to kiss down her sexy, smooth stomach until I reached the top of the black lace. My teeth closed over the top of her panties and I slowly peeled the thin cloth down her legs. Her already red face turned the color of a tomato as I crawled back towards her face, over her still body with her black lace bottoms in my lips and a hungry need painted plainly on my face.

"You're mine." I growled softly into her ear, letting the fabric fall onto the grass by her head. I leaned back, so that I was sitting upright, straddling the completely naked girl. I slowly pulled my underwear down around my legs. My rock hard cock was standing at attention as it was released from its prison. I watched the girl below me bite her lip in excitement and anticipation as the underwear fell away, letting my rock spring outwards, swinging slightly before it found her mouth. I grabbed a fist full of her hair and pulled her face to my engorged member, and she kissed it. Her lips parted and her tongue slid between them, pressing against my shaft. I used my grip of her head to direct her mouth to the most pleasurable spots, then I let go of her, letting her fall back to the grass. I reached between her legs, then pulled them over my shoulders. She changed quickly from silent and lusty to loud and pleased. Her face widened into an 'O' shape as my tongue moved deeper and deeper into her moist opening. My tongue flicked in circles and pushed hard against her g-spot, as she bucked and screamed her way closer to orgasm. I slipped two fingers into her, replacing my tongue and then began to suck and lick at her clitorus. Her back arched upwards as her moans were sucked back down her throat. I smiled into her as her eyes rolled back and her back relaxed. She bucked and ground her crotch against my mouth as she released. A long, half sigh, half moan came from the girl's lips before she collapsed onto the grass in a sweaty mess of silky flesh and cum. She took a deep breath in and then blinked before regaining the ability to move any other parts of her body.

I smiled mischievously. I leaned in and kissed her hard, taking what was left of her breath away. Pushing against her soft skin, I pressed my hard cock between her legs and let it slip into her. She moaned loudly as I parted her lower lips, filling her with myself. She closed her eyes and whispered "Deeper" as I slowly pushed farther and farther into her. The pleasure was as surreal as the world we were in. We felt every move the other made in the most sensual ways. I felt her pulse from her neck where my hand held her in place. She felt mine from the length of cock buried inside her. I moved back and forth, and she moaned with every stroke. It was like a work of art, and twice as passionate. We lay in the grass, converging for another few minutes before we both spilled over the edge, wrapped in the ecstasy of our embrace. For a few minutes, our slowing heartbeats synchronized like metronomes. There was nothing but us in the world, literally. We were perfect together. We fit perfectly together.

After we had been laying there for about an hour, I began to get restless. "Would you like to play some more?" I asked her.

She giggled. "Depends on your definition of play."

"I mean the kind of play where we go back into the game. Not the kind your dirty mind is stuck on." I winked and smiled.

"Sure. I guess I could use some zombie murdering to lift my spirits. I did just watch you die pretty brutally… I see now why humans get so attached to each other. Your mating rituals are so… Fun." She blushed again and pressed up against my body. "I am yours."

"Awesome. Let's go then." I swiped my menu open and selected start from last checkpoint. The green grass was gone in an instant. I was standing in the building, in the small room with no walls. I was looking into the room where I was torn apart and devoured.. It seemed a little smaller than before. But I saw just where they all were and I was not going to lose again. I cocked both of my weapons and jumped down. The thump of my feet turned the nearest infected's attention, so I put a bullet through his head before he could do anything. The gunshot alerted the rest of them. All six of them left came at me at once. I unloaded the revolver into the clicker first, making sure he died quickly. The rest of them would go down with a single headshot each. I pointed and clicked, letting my gun do all of the work, and before long they were all dead. I picked up the ammo that they dropped and reloaded my revolver. The pistol had about 4 bullets left, but now my revolver had 12. I was ready for another battle to be sure. I picked up a long board with nails on one end, and tucked it away to use as a weapon another time. I smiled proudly as the girls dropped into the room with me and followed me to the other side. Part of what had been the ceiling had collapsed into the room, making a ramp up to the next level on the far side of the building from where we came in. That seemed a lot easier than It had been on my last try.

"Good kills." Tess said as I led them up the ramp.

"They killed me the first time around, it was not good, just better." I replied.

"What do you mean they killed you? What first time?" Tess said, almost angry with my passive demeanor. I shrugged and walked forward, Charlotte on my heels and holding my hand. Tess stopped and stood, staring at me for a minute. "You're really just going to walk away from this conversation?" she egged. I shrugged again.

"There isn't really much for me to say. I know what's going to happen. That's all." I evaded the best I could.

"Tell me how you know it all. Tell me what happened to you Joel. What made you think so highly of yourself? What gave you this knowledge that you have used to scare everyone else. I am getting scared too, Joel. I won't just play dumb and follow you around anymore. I want answers." She said firmly. I knew we wouldn't get to keep going until I gave her what she wanted. She was a stubborn bitch when she wanted to be, and if she were a real person, I would owe her an explanation.

"This is all just a game. A video game. Remember those? You are a character. I am a person like you, but from a world outside this game. I became Joel. I took over his body and I am playing this game. He is the main character. You will follow me no matter what I tell you, because that's how the story works… I don't blame you for being scared, but I am the safest person to be around right now because I have played this game before. We make it to the capitol building and once we get there, the fireflies are all dead… That should be proof enough for you. When that happens, you will know I wasn't kidding.." I closed my eyes and frowned. I knew what I was saying was true, but I had just confirmed that an event would happen. One that I did not want to happen at all. She just nodded slowly, accepting what I was saying. "I don't believe a word you said, but I know what I saw. You know things. I will follow you until we get to the capitol building and if you lied, I will put you down Joel. I swear I will do it." Her voice trailed off slowly at the end of her statement. She would kill me, I knew she was telling the truth, but I also knew she didn't want to.

We walked to the far end of the building and found a stairwell that was totally blocked, up or down. There was a window that had been busted out and hanging feet below it was a window washer platform. There was another next to that one and they seemed to form a pathway. And when a game gives you a path, you take it. I lead the way to the window, but before I could even prepare myself to start climbing out of the safety of the leaning tower of death, Tess was pushing past me. She was hopping down onto the metal platform and as I was watching her jump down about 4 feet to the next window washing platform, Charlotte was walking out onto the first platform. Apparently I was the only one afraid of heights. "Hey! Wait up girls!" I said as I stepped out onto the metal mesh sheet dangling over 30 stories above a plethora of sharp and jagged rocks. I closed my eyes as the platform below my feet began to swing back and forth, just an inch. The whole world seemed to be closing in around me. I was going to fall and I was going to die. But at least the view was gorgeous.

"Hurry your ass up!" I heard from around the corner of the building where Tess and Charlotte had already made their way through a hole in the wall. I grabbed a firm handle of the railing closest to the next window washer lift. I turned backwards from the drop, measured out how far apart they were and then took a deep breath. This would be easy. This would be perfectly easy. I knew it wouldn't break or drop or anything because it didn't in the game. I remembered this part. I remembered the scenery. I remembered how brave I had felt when I had jumped this gap easily, but it wasn't me doing it. It was Joel. Joel was the hero here and I was nothing. Not unless I could make it through this obstacle. I took one more breath and then jumped, kicking my feet out behind me and swinging downwards until my legs ran into the railing of the next walkway. I let my body weight drop to the lower platform, but held on firmly to the first. My landing left the metal shaking and swaying. I looked down at my feet and quickly my eyes shut themselves again in reaction to the horrors that I had just beheld. The ground was still there, it was waiting for me to make just one mistake. One misstep that would send me plummeting from the building and splattering all over the rocks below. I released my firm grip on the first hand rail and grabbed onto the next. I heard a loud squealing sound and Charlotte yelled something, but it was too late. I was standing still, holding onto the railing for dear life as the metal platform that I had just released took my place in freefall, smashing over the rocks almost as soon as I realized that it was what had fallen. I looked down where the loud bang sound reverberated from and saw the metal shreds scattered around the ground, some shooting off and flying at least 20 feet from the location of impact. I looked back up at the ledge where Charlotte and Tess had disappeared to and their faces peeking back around the corner to make sure that I was still alive. A deep breath and a few well placed footsteps and I was safely back inside the building. "HOLY SHIT! DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT?! I ALMOST DIED!" I yelled at the two of them as they stood waiting for me. Tess had her arms crossed and looked more upset that I was wasting the time in her day. Charlotte looked like she was about to break into tears laughing at me. She had to cover her gaping mouth in an attempt to not be rude, but my feelings were already hurt.

"You know that it was programmed to fall after the last character got off of it.. Just so that you are aware. You weren't in any real danger." Charlotte smiled at me innocently, trying to be too cute to be mad at. It worked. I sighed and we kept on our journey. We made our way downwards, into the basement of the building. Before long we were only able to see with our flashlights. The good news was that zombies don't typically understand lights. When the infected charge someone its usually because they heard you, not because they saw you. They have much better hearing than most and quite often are blind from the disease that ruined them. I lead the way down into a hole in the floor of the basement of the building. We ended up in a mostly collapsed subway station. There were spores in the air, so Tess and I grabbed our gas masks and quickly covered our faces. Charlotte smiled and took a deep breath of the floating parasitic dust and then walked straight through it.

Tess looked over at me with concern and I smiled and shook my head. "She is actually immune to the infection." I confirmed what I knew she was thinking. "That was why I showed her her own arm. She is… another player. She hasn't played the game before so I was showing it to her to make her understand what she meant to the story. She is the cure Tess. We just have to get her to the fireflies and the game is over." Tess closed her eyes and shook her head, the ideas were not fully sinking in with her. How could you believe that your whole existence was a lie. How could you believe that everything that you worked so hard for, every memory that you had and every bit of your personality was just programming for someone else to enjoy? I wouldn't take that news well either. I was surprised with how well she kept going, even after hearing the news. We walked through the blurry tunnels, unable to see more than 10 feet ahead through the thick layers of spores in the air. The whole place looked like it had an orange sheen over it. The tunnel opened to our left. There was a train blocking the tracks past the opening, so we had to come out of the subway at this exit. We hopped off the tracks and onto the platform. As the spores began to clear I heard a sound. Then there was another sound. Clicks echoing off of walls and pillars from another room. It had to be a large room to cause the echos. The room that echoed with the sounds of clickers looked something out of a mall, but completely underground. Lining the room was shops from wall to wall. There was also plenty of infected. The total count probably ended up around 10 or 15 of them. Only a few were normal infected and the majority were clickers, standing patiently waiting for the next sound to pounce on. I pulled out my gun for protection, but didn't even raise it. Shooting now would cause all kinds of problems and we would end up swarmed before we could even put two of these fuckers down. There was no way out but slow and steady sneaking.

I picked an empty bottle off the ground and tossed it over a vending machine. It crashed heavily on the floor and the echos sent the clickers into a rage. They all began to swing their arms like deadly windmills and tore off in the direction of the noise. One of them headed straight for us, so I stepped to the side, and waited for it to smash into the vending machine. It hit the plastic casing with a loud thump and toppled backwards onto its back. I stuck a knife through its eye hole, but because of the plating around its head, the knife stuck into the head of the hideous deceased without killing it. I stood up before it could make another move and stomped on the handle to the knife. The whole things head seemed to implode under the impact. The knife bounced up and left a small but deep slash across my thigh. I picked it up and crawled as fast as I could without making sounds to where Charlotte and Tess had taken up waiting for me near the exit to the hallway. I looked back to find that all of the infected had taken to attacking the body of their fallen comrade. The noise was luckily enough to cover our footsteps as we rushed to the gate. I pulled on the gate, but it was solid. One of the security gates that you see covering the front windows of shops in bad neighborhoods or in malls. I looked around and found a ticket booth for the subway. I pulled the door open to the box and it made a loud popping sound as it opened. Of course, every single dead head turned their attention to our activities and soon they were rushing at us. Tess yelled "You had to fucking draw their attention?!" as she jumped to grab a ladder that had been sticking out horizontally over the gate the whole time. She and Charlotte quickly climbed up the ladder to safety. I couldn't quite get to the ladder in time, so I closed myself into the small booth. I pulled the door closed behind me and smiled through the glass at the two girls, then waved for them to keep going. They hopped down to the other side of the gate through a fairly large hole in the concrete. The booth was completely surrounded and the infected began to smash their fists into the thinning glass. One of them managed to smash a hole into the booth. I could hear Charlotte yelling to try to turn their attention from me, but nothing helped. There was nowhere to hide and they could see me. They would keep coming until they had me. I smiled mischievously as a thought came to me.

Charlotte was panicking. She was horrified that I might not make it out. She had this look of pure anxiety as she heard the glass give in and the infected grew louder as they began to push into the small ticket box. "This is horrible!" Charlotte cried out as Tess held her hand. "Nobody should have to die this way. He must be in so much pain…" She dropped onto her rump and buried her face in her hands.

"He'll be fine. Apparently this is just a videogame." Tess said, reassuringly as she could. She knew it wouldn't be, but saying it outloud always helped her and those around her. She waited for the howls of pain meaning the end of my life. She watched for blood on the hands of the infected, swinging into the booth. She looked for any sign that I was gone, so she could turn and run. And then there was a sign. A bright sign. The darkness receded quickly and the orange of the spores turned to red and ember as the flailing infected bodies all began to catch fire. The floor and walls of the box seemed to burn the brightest, but the bodies began to melt. Black and blue as the flames burned hotter than ever before. They all fell away from the small box and as the flames began to go out and the only thing left alive outside the box was shrivelled, charred and barely clinging to whatever life it had left, that was when I stepped out of the box.

I smiled at the girls. "Look what I made!" I held up a wine bottle that I had filled with alcohol and plugged with a cloth. "A molotov Cocktail!" I climbed up and over the gate the way the girls had gone and shrugged. "There was a lot of booze in that ticket booth. Someone was very unhappy with their job." Charlotte jumped me and yelled loudly "YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED! IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AWFUL TO WATCH YOU DIE LIKE THAT!" and Tess simply smacked me in the back of the head and then smiled at me. "Asshole." she muttered. We shook off the experience and kept moving forwards. We made it to the exit and out of the subway. We were only a few blocks away now, We just had to keep walking at this point.

Continuing our long and convoluted travels, we began traipsing down the street, close to exhaustion as we approached yet another roadblock. There was a bus crashed sideways between two small shops that completely blocked off any path around it. The bus must have rolled over into the position because the roof of the bus was completely ripped to shreds. The metal that used to safely hold passengers was now sticking up at odd angles looking more ready to rip a man's guts out than protect him. We turned off down an alleyway and my blood ran cold. "Run." I whispered softly, taking off down the street as quietly as I could. The two girls followed in confusion. Charlotte began to ask a question, but I pushed a finger to my lips and shushed her intensely. I turned again, this time stopping by a roll up garage door. I grabbed the unlocked chain and quickly began to hoist the door open, panic in my every action as I began to hear what I knew was coming. I quickly rushed the girls under the door. Tess immediately moved to hold up the door for me to get through as well. I practically dove under the door as a horde of infected at least 100 strong rounded the corner in a frantic mob of hunger. The door slammed shut behind me and the mob quickly swarmed the door, pounding on it continuously. The sound created was something straight out of a horror film, but worse because of the sheer numbers of them.

"Wow. Thanks Joel. That was a close one." Tess said.

"Yeah… That was close. I hate those fucking things." I muttered. Charlotte sat on a step, kicking her feet out in front of her.

"I like this place. It smells like cabbage." The small redhead said with such a straight face that both me and Tess couldn't help but break out laughing. Charlotte looked at us and frowned. "What? It smells like cabbage. I love cabbage!" I smiled and sat next to her on the step.

"Remember to remind me that I said this, but when we next see Tommy, I promise you can have some of his cabbage. Sound good?" I said softly. She nodded and smiled wide. She had this way of forcing my smile. Not in a bad way, but in the way that she always gave me something to smile about. There was never a dull moment. I loved listening to her talk and watching her move. She was this little ninja of fun, sneaking into your heart and killing you with cuteness.

We got up and began to search our new shelter. A slightly flooded garage, with tools on the walls and a large van parked in the center. There was a workbench against the wall and a few gun parts sitting on top as if we were the only people to have made it into the building. "Hey Tess, you want proof this is a videogame?" I smirked and tossed my pack onto the workbench, then pulled out my guns. I pulled a few cogs and metal sprockets out of my bag, laid them on top of my guns and then hit each gun with a hammer. The pistol all of a sudden had extra space for ammo and the revolver had a scope and higher damage and penetration power. I had no Idea how it happened. It just seemed like the thing to do. Video Games are the weirdest things. Tess stared at the transformation and nodded. "You know what, that was very bizarre… I think I have to start believing you just because you keep doing random magic tricks." She smiled for the first time in a while and I gave a half hearted smile back. I hated this place.

We scavenged for a few minutes, then moved to the next room. We cleared the space of 2 infected, then again scavenged. If we were going to be stuck, we would at least make the time useful. The building seemed fairly old in and of itself, but many of the things inside the building were centuries old. There were artifacts of all kinds. Pottery, clothing, and even a pre-outbreak, mint condition iPhone X was left to rot in the decrepit building. Those things were expensive as shit! Charlotte walked around the rooms, taking in everything she saw and stopping to read each of the plaques that still had text on them. She reached out to touch a small white vase with blue flowers wrapped around it and as her hand grasped the surface, it slipped out of her grip and crashed to the floor. Tess swatted Charlotte's wrists and gave her a dirty look. "That was older than Joel." Tess said matter of factly. "Actually, it's older than all three of our ages combined." she corrected herself, before turning around, picking up a bat from an old exhibit and smashing a similar vase to bits. The shattered pieces scattered about the room as the two girls smiled and laughed. I watched the events play out and smiled to myself. We worked our way to the roof, hoping to make the rest of the journey without any interference from the horde that roamed the streets below. We walked up a staircase, but there was only one open door. It lead through a room that was completely collapsed with rotten wood beams and the doorway out was blocked by all kinds of debris. I went to the doorway and then turned to hug Tess. "You are amazing. Don't forget that." I muttered, about to tear up. She cocked her head to the side and looked at me skeptically. I remembered this part of the game like I had played it yesterday. She wouldn't understand what I was talking about now, but I knew that if I warned her the story may just end abruptly at this dead end. We could end up stuck here forever because I decided to open my damned mouth... I pulled Charlotte to my side and kissed her hard. "Keep that one safe as you can. Okay?" I smiled at the girl. She nodded, confusion plain on her face.

"Of course. Where are you going?" Charlotte prodded.

"I'll be right behind you... But I can't help." I said, my lips pulled back into a forced smile. "I promise you will be okay. Okay?" I kissed her cheek. She nodded solemnly and looked through the debris expectantly. I took a deep breath and then lifted the huge beam. The hole created was just large enough for Charlotte and Tess to squeeze through. Seconds after they were safely on the other side, the rotten debris shifted and the whole pile came crashing to the floor. A pathway opened up to my left, and I quickly pushed my way through it. There was yelling and shooting from the other side of the wall as I picked up the pace. "Joel!" I heard Tess yell through the debris, trying to make sure that I was still okay. I ran through the halls and didn't give a single fuck as I was chased by 2 clickers. I was on a mission. The infected caught up with me just before I turned the last corner. I felt fingers scrape my back in an attempt to grab hold, so I wheeled around and swung a metal pipe straight at the things head. Everything from the neck up disappeared from the body before It collapsed to the floor. The next one came at me over the first and tripped. I dodged and let it hit the floor before driving the metal pipe into through the back of its skull. I turned back and ran to the doorway where an infected piece of shit was pounding on a closet door. I was too late. I pulled out my gun and shot the thing dead, then opened the door slowly.

"Its me." I muttered before pulling the handle and bringing light to the darkness within. Charlotte came running out first. She was so happy to see me that she jumped into my arms.

"Al! You're here! I thought for a second that the rubble might have crushed you!" I ignored the comment and gave Tess my hand to help her stand back up. She was noticeably upset and her eyes didn't open for a minute. I pulled her to the side and looked her in the eyes. "I know. I'm sorry." I said, beginning to tear up. Charlotte looked between our two sad faces and then ran up to hug the both of us. We stood for a minute, just regaining composure and hugging each other before moving on. We turned and walked to the windows on the far side of the building and opened one up. Charlotte jumped first, going out the window so fast you would have thought she was being chased. Tess was next, climbing awkwardly out the window onto the fire escape and then heading up. She was careful not to move one of her shoulders much and I noticed it clearly, even though she did well to cover it up. I followed the group, once again trailing behind to make sure that everyone was safe for the time being. I followed the two up the stairs to the roof and looked around. It was far from the tallest building in the city. In fact, at only 3 stories, it was pretty close to one of the smallest, and yet the view was incredible. I looked out over the landscape and soaked it all in. It was real. It was so much more real than my memories of this place. You could see buildings all around. To one direction was a view of suburbia as far as the eye could see. The opposite direction was towers, raised overhead to amazing heights. It was like being in new york, but every building was decrepit. They were shedding bricks, losing windows, and even decaying into rubble. Each building told a story, but every story ended the same. When people were removed from the landscape, nature took over once again. Men were raised by god's hand, buildings and cities raised by man's hand. But as god was forgotten by men, men were forgotten by god. And alone, without god, man never stood a chance. And neither had man's creation. But God's creations not only survived, but thrived. The greenery hanging from every missing stone, the trees that toppled towers, and even the spores that infected the men. The world was thriving again. The world was alive again. And it was good. This was how earth should be in the real world.

"I almost hope that this happens someday. I almost hope that the world ends so that this world can begin." I said to Charlotte. She smiled and held my hand.

"Someday it will. And even if you never see it, you will have experienced it. We all return to dust." She said softly, almost poetically. Her hair blew in the breeze. My lips pulled back farther, my smile a bit brighter.

"I experienced it, even if I will never see it. And that is why I started playing games to begin with." I smiled and leaned against an air vent. "This is where I leave tonight, princess." I reached out and grabbed Charlotte's hand. "I want this image to be in my dreams. This scenery and you." I kissed her head and she smiled.

"Sleep well my administrator." she said genuinely, plastering one of the biggest smiles onto my face.

I signed off of the game and then I was alone again. Sitting in my living room with nothing but a dream. A dream of the end of the world. And a girl waiting for me at the edge of that world. And she was mine. I got up, stretched and got ready for bed. That night as I fell asleep, I pictured the view. I never wanted anything more than to see that memory forever.


	9. A Change of Plans

Chapter 8: A Change of Plans

The next morning was fairly plain. I got up, went to work and came home. I didn't even talk to one person today. A new record… I was just the IT guy after all. I was so awkward that most people elected to send me emails and have me fix everything remotely, even when they are one desk away. I know that I am not the most outward person, nor the most enthusiastic person. I just feel like in an office of 30 people, it's kind of hard to hide, unless you work in IT. I got home after my long and boring day. I cleaned up a few viruses and removed a few bugs. I even had to dig into the computer's registry.

I realized the registry is similar to the brain. It makes connections and stores rules and history and the more the computer learns, the larger and more complex it becomes. I wondered almost all day what the registry would look like on my home computer. I wondered if it would be blank, because the A.I. program used replaced it. Maybe it would be just like before? Maybe it would be the most detailed and thorough registry that the world has ever seen. Did I have sex with the registry? What exactly did I have sex with? That is most certainly not something that I say on a regular basis… I mean it's not something that I think either. The whole situation seemed a little bit awkward, but like I keep saying, I work in IT. I fucked my computer. I almost felt like one of those weird ass fuckers that you see on "My strange addiction" who fucks their cars because they feel something special when they drive. I get a boner going 120 Mph down the 101-S too, but I don't stick it back into my car! What made this any different? For one, she was as real as me in that world. She was digital, but not pixelated. She was perfectly shaped. Perfectly perfect in every way. She knew me. And I knew her. And it was good. That's what made it different. When I was in there, I was digital too. I didn't have sex with anything. But did the sex still happen?…

I give up. I fucked my computer. I am a technophile. I didn't care enough to think about this anymore.

I got home, smoked a spliff and ate a whole medium pizza from dominos. I felt completely ready to pop, so I sat at my laptop and started up netflix. I am not, as some readers I am sure are assuming, a neckbeard. I am actually fairly thin and well shaven. I don't even own a fedora. If you were to categorize me, I would be lazy stoner working in IT. I make enough to cover my expenses and I live in a pig stye because I never clean, but I am active enough to keep the pounds off, so definitely not a neckbeard.. Plus neckbeards wouldn't even be able to seduce their computers. Like shit, you assholes are pretty fucking gross most of the time. Yes I am aware that insulting the readers of my book, neckbeard or not, is probably not the best idea, but I have to assume that since every normal person put down the book when I complained they were looking NPC up, that the only people left reading are gamers and neckbeards who just want more of page 44. Fucking perverts. Don't worry, there's more to come. I sat around watching Bojack Horseman for like 2 hours, just enjoying being high. After the 3rd episode of Bojack ended a small blip appeared on my desktop monitor. It grew until Charlotte was standing naked on my screen. She smiled seductively and covered herself poorly with her hands.

"Ready to play?" she said through the speakers ever so softly.

"No. Not really." I tried desperately to keep a straight face and not make it obvious that I was now completely erect. She frowned and gave me puppy dog eyes.

"You sure?" she used the hand that had covered her tits to wipe an imaginary tear from her eyes. "You know you want to come see me and Tess. Just come back here."

I shook my head. Definitely not Tess. I didn't want to face her again after what I had done to her.. She had just started to be happy and there I went, just ruining it. "I will come play tonight. I just have some things to get done." She smiled mischievously.

"Like what? Anything I can help with?"

"Actually, no. It's just some paperwork." The printer whirred to life as soon as I finished the statement. A document came out and she pointed to it.

"That paperwork?" She asked softly. I sighed and stood, then picked up the papers off the printer and smiled. She had printed out a full report that I had been planning on doing myself. It was written the exact same way that I normally type, the word choice and everything was perfect. I didn't have to even think about it either. I almost wondered if this was how my boss got to be CEO. I mean I know that I should respect him just based on position, but I find that incredibly difficult considering he's a fucking idiot. I often think about his poor parents and how they must have tried so hard, but watched him turn out how he did anyways. He must be the posterboy for birth control. He thinks that he is god's gift to man, but if he WAS the greatest man alive, nobody would have had the brains to invent the wheel. Okay I am done now. No more insults. Well not so much of insults as descriptions, but you get the point. I tossed the paperwork into my bag and shrugged at my camera. "I guess now I have nothing left to do but join you!" I smiled and sat at my computer, opened up steam and started the game. I was back, we were standing in ankle deep water, surrounded by green lily pads and rusted cars. The Golden dome was right in front of us now as we trudged through the murky, but beautiful water. We stepped onto the stairs to the main doorway, surrounded by a row of 20 foot tall pillars. We walked inside and Tess sniffed. Charlotte looked at the three bodies on the ground and sighed, nodding slowly. The fireflies that we had come to meet up with were all dead. I looked Tess in the eyes and she looked back, then she broke down into tears. She dropped to her knees and gave in as the world stole her last hope of redemption. She had been bitten in that closet. On the shoulder, so she couldn't remove the injury with amputation. She was going to die, it was just a matter of when. Charlotte sat with Tess and tried to cheer her up. "Don't worry! We can make it! To the fireflies lab." She smiled wide, hopeful and innocent. She picked up a note from one of the bodies that told the once living freedom fighters where to deliver the girl.

"Tess. I'm sorry. I know." Her eyes flew up to meet mine, her face curled into a snarl.

"YOU DID KNOW DIDN'T YOU?! YOU KNEW FROM THE BEGINNING! YOU COULD HAVE SAVED ME! YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS!" She yelled, tears still rolling down her cheeks.

Charlotte stepped back from her, "That isn't true." Charlotte looked at me with pleading eyes

"It is." I said softly. "It is true. The story goes how the story goes. I couldn't save my daughter 20 years ago and I have watched her die over and over again. I can't save Tess." I turned to Tess. "I have one fucking shot. I can save this girl. I can get her to a firefly lab and they CAN make a cure for this. You won't make it. It just isn't possible, but me and this girl. We can get there and we will. I will bring her to them and make this world a better place. Your sacrifice is not in vain. I promise." I held her by the shoulders as I spoke to her, then pulled her into a hug. She was crying at this point. It wasn't like Tess at all. She never broke.

"I can't turn into one of those things." she said, wiping the last of her tears from her eyes.

A megaphone from outside marked the end of our sob story. "Come out with your hands up! We have the building surrounded!" A voice yelled from one of the soldiers convoy vehicles. They had beat us here. That's why the fireflies were dead.

"Come on. We can still get out the back of the building. They have it surrounded, but it is better guarded from this entrance." I said, planning our escape. Charlotte and I turned to head through the large doors behind us, but Tess held her ground.

"I told you, I will not become one of them." She said softly. "I will hold them off. You both go. Make it. Take her there and don't you dare let me die in vain!" Her voice picked up power the more that she used it until her last sentence turned to yelling. I grabbed Charlotte's hand and we ran for the doors to the next chamber.

The building itself was like any capitol building. It had a large and open hall in front, with a balcony all the way around the upper level. The room was completely white from the marble that it was carved from. There was a chamber room with enough seating for a small concert in the back and office buildings on the second floor along the sides of the building. The main hall had a few exits, but the one that we went through was dead center across from the entrance. We ran into the double doors and shoved my metal pipe through the handles to keep them closed behind us. The main doors burst open and a barrage of gunshots rang off.

I heard the voice of a soldier saying "Men down. Men down. Single target deceased. Tracking the other two. Need backup." I turned and searched the room we were in. It was large and white and marble, just like the last, but it only had stairs in it. Wrapping around from either side of the room up to the middle, then back to a set of doors leading to the balcony. We rushed up the stairs and kept as quiet as possible. I took a deep breath and then we pushed the door open just a crack, sneaking into the main chamber once again from a new vantage point. The soldiers responding to the backup call had just entered the building, they were searching the bottom floor for us, ready to shoot first and ask questions later. I looked over the carnage laid out on the floor. The soldiers moved in formation around the bodies. I saw the fireflies first, They were farthest from the door. Then the dead soldiers. Tess had actually taken out quite a few. There were 4 new soldier corpses littering the floor. The last body was hers. My skin got cold and I shivered slightly when I saw her. She was laying on the ground, her head turned to the side so that she was looking almost at us. She had a faint smile on her lips. Her blood seemed to form a perfect circle around her chest, almost as if she was standing in front of a flag. Like a hero. Just before we turned to leave, I noticed a small shimmer on her face, a tear rolled down her cheek, then hit the marble. As it hit the stone, it disappeared. She was gone. I missed her already.

I motioned for the silently grieving Charlotte to follow me closely. We made our way through the upstairs hallways, then ran into a dead end. The hallways ended abruptly at a window that had a wonderful view of another window. 3 feet away, the building seemed to have wrapped back around the other way. I went the wrong way. I shook my head. "She won't die in vain." I took a gun out and bashed the window. It crumbled to shards and collapsed around our feet into a pile of white flakes of sharp edges. I walked into the office next to us and grabbed a paperweight off the desk, then hurled it through the next window. The glass breaking was sure to give away our position, but we would make it. I jumped first, then turned back to hold out a hand. Charlotte leapt and landed even farther into the hallway than I had. She kept running and I chased after her. We ran down the hallways past offices on our left and the chamber room on our right. There were soldiers in the chamber room, looking around for us. They heard our footsteps above them and fired through the upstairs door, missing us by a couple feet. We kept running, refusing to stop until we got to another staircase. This time going down. We snuck down the stairs and into a long, large hallway. We moved towards the door on the far end that seemed to lead outside. We made it almost halfway down the hall before the doors burst open. Ducking behind a pillar in the middle of the hallway, we waited and listened, then peaked around the pillar to scout ahead. The next pillar up had a body lying against it. The body of what looked like a hunter had an orange vest and a rifle on its lap. "Stay" I whispered to Charlotte.

I waited for the soldiers to turn off down the open rooms to either side of the hallway, then pushed forwards. Two soldiers remained in the main hall while two sets of two went through each of the side rooms. They marched forwards at the same rate, meeting back up at the end of the rooms. I had made it to the next pillar without being seen, but they were closing in. The soldiers in the main chamber were about 20 feet from me now. I checked the gun for any ammo and found 2 rounds. It was a standard .22 caliber hunting rifle. I tucked the gun into my backpack, then pulled out my revolver. I had 15 rounds for the gun, but only 6 could fit at a time. I made sure to remove all of the fired rounds and replace them. I stood up behind the pillar and then the soldiers passed me. There was one on either side of me. I pushed the barrel under one guards helmet, then pulled the trigger. I pulled the fresh body between me and the next guard for protection, then tossed it at him to knock him off of his feet. He stumbled back and I hit him through the visor. He dropped to the floor with his friend as the 4 remaining soldiers burst in from either side of me.

They were closer to Charlotte than me, so I fired at one of them to keep their attention. The bullet landed in the guard's helmet, causing it to fly from his head. He dropped to a knee for a second to regain his composure before standing back up and joining the fight. His friends had already began laying down a barrage of bullets. They really had no worries about running out, did they? I paused and waited for a second for them to reload, but as one reloaded the next continued shooting in his place. I leaned out from behind the pillar and took two more shots. One hit the helmetless guard through his left eye, and the other bounced off the chest armor of the soldier next to him, knocking the wind out of him, but not doing any lasting damage. While he paused to get his breath back, I moved to the side of the pillar closest to him and put my last bullet into his neck. A fountain of blood erupted from him for just a brief moment, then he collapsed like the rest. The blood pooling around his body was much greater than any of the rest. I reloaded as quickly as I could and finished just in time for the two remaining soldiers to reach the pillar I was hiding behind. One of them went one way, the other went the other way, and they tried to either force me into the open or kill me outright. I bashed ones visor in and then wrapped my arm around his neck, thrusting my gun barrel under his chin. I held him between me and the final soldier for a minute, then with a shaky, adrenaline filled voice I yelled "Drop your weapon!" The soldier laughed out loud for a second, then shot his friend through the broken visor. The sudden weight of the limp body in my arms pulled me down just enough to give the soldier a clear, unobstructed shot. I heard a gunshot ring off and a sharp throbbing pain erupted from my side. I fell to the ground, my gun toppled from my weak hand and I looked up at the soldier standing over me, my hands coming up to my face out of instinct. I closed my eyes and prepared to be sent back to the field of green grass. Another gunshot rang out. I opened my eyes again and I was still alive.

Charlotte came running up to me, one of the soldiers handguns in her hand. She smiled. I took a deep breath and calmed myself, knowing that I was still alive was almost as traumatic as being shot. Speaking of, I should clean that up, I thought. I sat up and wrapped my stomach in cloth. The bullet had gone all the way through, but it still stung like hell. The shot would most likely have killed me if it were real life. I knew that being a superhero here did not make me any more bulletproof in the real world. I felt my body regenerate the wound. And that most certainly did not happen in the real world. I slowly made my way back to my feet. The soldiers weren't all gone, just not in the area yet. We had to get out. Charlotte grabbed my hand and lead the way out of the building. We ran down the steps and towards an open subway entrance. A soldier started yelling from the top story of the building, watching us run out of range. He shot a few times and the bullets landed into the murky water, wasted. There were gates all around the area, but as we got closer to the subway entrance, a tank rolled around the back of the building. The soldier from the building must have radioed for support. We made it into the subway just as the gate came crashing down under the tread of the huge tank. It rolled to the entrance and blocked off our path back.

The subway was filled with spores, so I quickly strapped on my gas mask. We ran through the tunnels, dodging between hollowed out, rusted trains and a few recent infected. The tunnels became blocked up so we moved through the hollow trains to get through the tunnel. The soldiers had completely given up on the chase after they met the first infected. They were well trained in dealing with fireflies, but most of their training on infected relied around shooting for the head when necessary and avoiding them under all other circumstances. If you get so much as scratched by one of them, you have a chance of getting the infection. If you breathe the spores or get bit you will definitely be infected. There are so many ways to be infected, that it's typically easier to just avoid them all together. The tunnel kept going, but the floor dropped out ahead. It looked shallow at first, but the floor kept going down until the water was at least 30 feet deep. The spores cleared up over the water, so I could take my mask off once we got past the trains. I lead Charlotte into a room of to the left of the tunnel that looked mostly clear. I pulled the mask off of my face and then pulled the girl into a tight hug. "I am sorry about Tess. I am sorry I didn't tell you, but I knew you would tell her and if we told her then she would have changed the story too much. I do want to change certain parts of the story, but If we go too far off track, then there might not be a way to get back on track. If Tess had lived, I believe that we would have died in that museum." I spoke quickly, hoping that she understood why I had to do what I did. "Tess understood. Tess was not only understanding, but she still gave what was left of her life to protect us. She was a hero. She was my hero." I muttered, slowing down as my breath slowed down with me.

Charlotte squished me tighter and frowned. "I hate watching all my friends die.." Her voice was soft and sad. "I keep seeing this girl in my head. She was my best friend once. Well she was Ellie's best friend." She looked at her shoes and stopped speaking, letting her mind take her back to that place. I held her and waited patiently. Flashbacks were understandable with the things that she had seen. I ran my fingers down her back and she looked up at me. "Thank you for always being here for me, Al." I forced a smile and nodded.

I would always be there for her. I had decided that not long after I had made another decision. I wasn't quite sure how to go about it or how it would work out for us, but I knew that until I figured it out, I wouldn't leave her side. Not for more than a day.

We walked back out of the room, after finding a few useful things inside. I walked to the edge of the water, prepared myself for wet socks, then dove in fully clothed. I smiled as the water washed away the blood stains and sweat from my awfully dirty clothes. The water rushed into my mouth and my eyes as I looked around for Charlotte. She wasn't in the water, so I surfaced, then opened my eyes again to search for her. She was standing awkwardly by the side of the water. "I…" She began, then closed her mouth again. She looked as if she was paralysed by fear. I looked up at her. "Do you need help, dear?" I said, folding my arms on the edge of the pool. She nodded. "I may be in a girl's body, but I am still a computer.. Computers and water do NOT mix." I laughed hard at the concept.

"Well good news for you is that Ellie, couldn't swim, so instead they put little floating pallets in the water so you can ride them over the water instead of diving in. Sound like a deal?" I pushed off against the side, still talking and swam backwards to the pallet that I had seen easily on the opposite side of the tunnel. I swam it back over and Charlotte seemed to relax.

"I found a flashlight." She muttered, stepping timidly onto the platform. I swam through the water, pushing the wooden pallet to the other side of the tunnel. The ledge on this side was a little bit higher and just a tad bit out of reach from the water. Charlotte hopped up from her pallet and I could hear little wet footsteps running off away from the water.

"Hey! I can't reach. Can you get a ladder or something for me?" I said to the thin air. A ladder flew horizontally against the ground just over the ledge, then the bottom fell straight into the water. There was a submerged train thats roof was just high enough to catch the sinking ladder. I used it to climb my way out of the water, then looked around. I shook myself, trying to evade some of the water as I found Charlotte leaning on a doorway, waiting for me before we made our way out of the tunnel. I followed her, becoming happier with every step until the sunlight hit my face again. I took her hand and we walked out of the city. Together. "I love you." I said softly just before the game cut to black. I paused and quit out of the game before the transition ended and then I was back on my couch. The water that had soaked me to the bone earlier was gone. There never was water. I was just playing a game.


	10. Tea

Chapter 9: Tea

After yet another boring and monotonous day, I came back to my computer and sat down to play my favorite game. I came in clear headed this time. I was standing in a forest. Charlotte bounced up and down as she realized that I was back. "Hooray! I missed you!" She said, wrapping herself around me tightly. I smiled and hugged her back.

"And I missed you, my dear." I ran my hand down her back. I was slowly being sucked into this world. Sucked into it without a care for the real world. What made this any less real? I could do anything I wanted to. I could spend forever here and come back to life whenever I felt like it. I honestly began to long for this place every time I left. I smiled and looked around for a path to continue the story. Instead I found a treat. I shushed the girl attached to my hip and pointed off into the trees. There was a small brown shape. Charlotte had a confused look on her face until a thin head on a long neck moved into view. She gasped and the deer's head turned sideways, one eye pointed directly at us while the other remained vigilant from other angles. I saw that it had no antlers, and no little ones, so when Charlotte pulled gently from my grip, I let her move towards the animal. She began slowly but not slowly enough, and the deer stomped once into the grass below its hooves. She stopped for a second, then bowed to the animal and then walked even slower to the animal. She was pretty good at that, I had to admit. After a few minutes of slowly approaching, she finally made it to the gorgeous animal. She looked it in the eyes for a minute before ever so slowly reaching out and placing a hand on the side of its neck. She smiled widely as her hand moved over the course hair.

It looked straight out of a dream. The light shone through the trees with intensity from the opposite side of the two of them. It put a sort of halo around her head and while it brightened all of the colors of the forest, it seemed to block out the colors of the two creatures, leaving a beautiful sunset silhouette of the girl just touching the deer. Her whole body seemed to be darkened by the placement of the sun except her smile which shone brighter than the sun. They say a picture is worth a million words, but there was only one word to explain this sight; Perfection.

I waited patiently, staying completely still so as not to scare the deer. Charlotte turned to smile at me and her eyes looked like beautiful emeralds in the low light. A far off gunshot echoed softly through the woods and the deer turned its attention. It turned slowly and bounded off away from the sound, Charlotte beamed as she returned to my side.

"I haven't ever seen a deer in person before. Only in those books that I remember from the military school." Her smile seemed to darken as she thought more about her past. "I hated that school." She shivered and her face seemed to turn to stone. From ecstatic to solemn just from the mention of her past.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed. "I know how it was. I know the stories. You don't need to say a thing unless you want to." I said softly, staring where the deer had been, the sun now sinking over the hills in that very spot. She leaned against me and we watched the sunset together. After the day had officially reached its end, we began to march onwards. There was plenty of room to walk around, but the obvious path ended up leading us into the backyard of a small apartment complex on the edge of a small town.

"So what do you know about this place?" Charlotte asked me as we hopped down a small ledge in the backyard next to the main building.

"I know that there is a clicker in that shed. I know that there are a lot of infected at the highschool… And I mean a LOT. And I know that this whole town is rigged to blow from well placed and mostly hidden bombs."

She stepped another foot from the shed and then looked at me nervously. "We have to go into the school don't we?" I chuckled a little and she stared anxiously at her feet. "I hate when I see you in danger." she muttered, then looked up at me. "It makes me upset." her eyes shimmered as they became wet, but not a tear spilled over before she blinked them away.

I kissed her head softly. "You're my princess." I smiled and hugged her close. "And if my princess decrees, then so shall it be. If you don't want to see me in trouble, then don't. We can play another game. We can do whatever you want." I waited for her as she thought about my proposition. She contorted her face into the most stereotypical thinking face and I couldn't help myself but laugh. She froze like that thinking for almost a minute. I turned and began walking away and when she finally popped out of her trance, I had killed the clicker in the shed and was at the top of a staircase leading into the second story of the apartment complex.

She ran to catch up and then in a slightly out of breath voice said, "I want to play this all the way through first. I don't care how many times we die or we start over. I want to finish this game because this story is really interesting and I don't know how anything works out in the end." She took a deep breath and leaned back against a railing. I smiled wider, before kissing her on the forehead.

"You know you are aloud to take a breath in the middle of talking. It helps to wait until the end of each sentence, but you are aloud at any point." I my smile turned to a smirk and her jaw dropped with the news.

"Really?! I thought you were supposed to just talk until you run out of things to say!" She beamed and took a deep breath. "That makes talking a lot easier." She wiggled slightly in her enthusiasm and I couldn't help but break down laughing. I opened the door to the small complex and found the nearest couch, then plopped down and laughed more. She sat down next to me, then laid her head in my lap. "Thank you." She said with a happy, genuineness to her voice that gave me goosebumps. I ran my fingers through the girls hair. I really did want to just hold her so close that nothing could happen to her. I wanted to defend her and protect her and I knew that throughout this game, She would have to defend herself. I felt bad about it, but I knew she could do it. She was incredible. We searched the house and then once we found enough supplies, we left. The only thing between us and our path now, was a fence. I got down on one knee and smiled at the girl, then put my hands together. She practically jumped into my hands, and when I lifted, she went over the fence like a ballerina in flight. She gracefully grabbed a hold of the top of the 10 foot high fence and hoisted herself over it. She walked over to the gate nearby when she was over and pulled the metal pole out of the lock mechanism so that it would open. I walked in and then put the metal pole back into place.

Charlotte watched me push the poll back into the fence and gave me a questioning look. I started walking and then answered her voiceless question. "I don't necessarily like Bill, but he is a friend. I wouldn't care so much about a small opening if there was anyone besides Bill in this Town, but it's just him and his traps. He loves his fucking traps." I sighed and a flashback of times that Joel spent with Bill seemed to pass before my eyes.

I was standing next to the slightly plump man and Tess was on my other side. He was holding an automatic rifle, I was holding a machete and Tess was holding a flamethrower. We put our backs together and spun in a circle while they fired into the oncoming hordes of zombies and I protected his back when they got too close. I hacked off more than my fair share of fiery limbs that day. Without me and Tess, he would have been toast. Before we got ourselves into that mess, I was standing on a roof watching the man being chased down an ally by himself. Tess and I had been planning on stealing not only the man's guns, but his town too. There were at least 30 of the infected and they were closing in on his tail. I had protected him without his permission, sure, but he owed me anyways. We let him go after the ordeal was over. We let him keep his weapons, and he promised to do us a favor when we needed one. We even got to be pretty okay friends for a time. According to the note that Charlotte had found on the bodies of the soldiers back when we still had Tess, We would need to travel to salt lake city. A car would be a great favor, I think. A running car is what we would need to get across that much of the country. We could walk, but it would take weeks or even months. We got moving to the center of town. We didn't need to find Bill. This is his town. We just let him find us, and make sure he doesn't kill us before we remind him who we are. He is a bit of a recluse and as far as I had heard, nobody had seen him for years. I walked with Charlotte into the center of a large and open street. We walked around, looking for supplies for a few minutes. We found an old Pizza parlour and found a broken old arcade machine. Charlotte's eyes lit up. She ran to the device and wiggled the nobs. "I played one of these once. It was with my old friend.." She blinked and the smile vanished. "Her name was Riley." She looked down for a minute and her hands slipped from the controls.

I nodded and then reached for her chin. I curled a finger and lifted her chin with it until she was looking at me. "That was the least Joyful person I have ever seen holding a Joystick." I said with a completely straight face. The edge of her lips pulled back and she blinked slowly, the wetness receding from her eyes. She was the strongest person I knew after Tess, and I met a lot of people throughout my life. Most of them in a world completely different from this. The ones from that world were all weak. They were all pitiful and they wouldn't last a minute here. In fact the only reason that I was alive was because I had as many chances as I wanted. I was nothing compared to the hardened warriors that lived in this dystopia. And despite having lost some friends, I was glad that I was here. I was glad that I could enjoy their company. The people in this game had become my family shortly after playing it, but now they were me. Now I was them. I was the one who had to make split second decisions and worst of all, I was the one who decided who would die and who would live. I was getting used to the blood, but watching that single tear roll down Tess's face and into the pool of blood around her was the hardest thing that I had ever faced.

I kissed the short girls forehead and we went on our way. There were overturned busses and cars parked at odd angles throughout the street ahead of us, to keep out unwanted guests. Unwanted probably like ourselves knowing Bill. I lead Charlotte down an alleyway and as we began walking through the tightish space, a clicker darted around the corner and headed straight for us. I stood my ground and didn't flinch while Charlotte pulled out her pistol and tried to get her shaking hand to level the weapon. The clicker ran through a difficult to see tripwire and was immediately blown to fucking hell. Limbs splattered against the wall opposite the explosive. I continued to walk down the alley, looking back at the still shaking girl standing with gun pointed downwards. She was in shock for sure. The explosion was loud and certainly attracted more of them, so I walked back, took the gun from her and walked with her, hand in hand. She looked at me once we had gotten a decent ways down the alley and whispered. "That's the kinds of traps that we have to watch out for?"

I reached down to the floor, picked up a brick and tossed it backwards setting off a chain of 3 explosions that cleared out the next alley. "Yes. Just breath. You're going to be fine. I will take care of you." She looked me over and then nodded, her face still showing signs of reasonable worry. I smiled. "Seriously. They're a bigger danger to the infected." I said, pointing at the next tripwire. "You can see them like ten feet away if you look for them. See?"

She found the outline of the wire from the distance and nodded slowly. "Still be careful okay?"

"Of course." I smiled at the angel. We walked together, avoiding and blowing up traps throughout the town on our way to the center. A few traps that we had snuck underneath or walked around blew up as the infected found our path and followed it, without the precaution that we were using. We walked from alley to open street to alley again through a maze of cars and buildings and even a few barricades. At one point we found a body with arrows sticking from his torso.

"Is Bill good with a bow and arrow?" Charlotte looked at me.

"I suppose he is." I smiled at the idea of seeing the man aim the bow.

Finally, after some maneuvering and dodging of multiple near death experiences, we ended up standing outside of a warehouse with the doors wide open. It was obvious that it was a trap even before I had experienced it, but I figured that it would be a fun thing to try shooting while upside down anyways. I smiled and motioned for Charlotte to stay put while I ran in and jumped into the center of the room. A noose closed quickly around my ankle and pulled my foot out from under me, then hoisted me up into the air. I pulled out my revolver and took aim out of the opposite open door.

"Charlotte! I need you to wait until I have shot at least one of these fuckers from upside down, because I want to try it. Go wait for that on top of the fridge over there. It's the counterweight, so if you cut the rope attached to it, I fall down. Okay?" She nodded and ran to the fridge. I had taken her gun a while back when she had a panic attack and hadn't given it back just yet, so she was mostly defenseless except for her knife. I smiled as a small group of about 6 infected came rushing at me while I dangled like fresh meat. I took aim and hit one in the head, then as I pulled the trigger again to kill another one, I dropped from the sky. I had only told her to wait for me to hit one of them… I fell to the floor and just barely managed to swing my legs out to the side far enough to avoid smashing my head into the concrete below.

I landed hard on my shoulder, and then my chin and chest hit next, my knee smashed into the ground last and hardest. One of them was over me as I was rolling back onto my back. I put a bullet through their head and they toppled over my body. Two more were already crashing down beside me to begin digging into their dinner. I shot one through the head and the other bit into the body above mine, then growled loudly and tore at the rotting flesh in search of mine. I shot him too and then put my last bullet into the head of the second to last infected. I pushed the body off of me as the final infected charged at me. It let out a blood boiling screech and grabbed hold of my shirt. I shoved a hunting knife through the eye of the horrifying beast. It toppled to the ground with the rest just before another wave came in. I backed away from the door and tossed Charlotte the gun that I had taken from her. She grabbed it out of the air and shot the closest one to me easily through the head then began shooting each of them as they got close, so that I could reload my revolver. I pulled out my pistol once I had finished reloading and then began shooting dual wielding, putting every fucking one on the ground before they had a chance to get anywhere near me. When the last of the gunshots stopped echoing I listened for more infected. What I hadn't expected to hear was a man's voice from behind me.

"Don't turn around." the voice said.

"Bill." I said in return. I raised my hands over my head after putting my guns back into their holsters slowly. I turned around with hands still up and smiled. "Bill it's me. Joel." He looked at me for a minute. He had his arm around Charlotte's neck and she was looking at me unamused. The adrenaline began to wear off from the experience and I dropped to my unbroken knee. The battle was fun, for sure, but it had worn me out significantly.

Bill looked at the girl and wrinkled his face. "You didn't tell me you and Tess had a kid."

I smiled and laughed. "We didn't, but she is with me." I paused and looked at the 9mm still pointed at Charlotte. "Could we put the guns down now?" I asked, hoping to be genuine enough that he would listen to me.

He scoffed and pointed the gun at me. "You really think that you can just walk in here and take whatever you want? Again?!" He growled and shot the ground next to me, then as he was returning the gun to its place on Charlotte's temple, she bit his arm and the gun dropped. He loosened his grip enough that when she kicked him in the toe, she pulled right out of his arms. She grabbed the gun off of the floor and moved to my side, holding Bill in her sights the whole time. His face was a mixture of stunned and pained at first. Soon it turned to a smile and he lowered his head a bit, then nodded. "You sure she isn't Tess's? What a ball of fire?" His heavyset body bounced up and down slightly as he chuckled at his own joke.

Charlotte looked him dead in the eyes and with a half snarl yelled "She died."

"Tess is gone? Wow.. the world has a crazy sense of humor doesn't it?" He began to laugh out loud and Charlotte dropped the weapon an inch and shot next to the mans feet then returned her aim to his face, making him jump. "Jeez kid!" He yelped in an undignified high pitch voice. We sat for a moment of awkward standoff, then I raised my hand to Charlotte. She handed me the gun reluctantly. As soon as the gun was out of Charlotte's hands Bill pulled another gun from his waist, but I was faster. I shot the gun right out of his hand, Leaned my head to the side and stared at him with absolute calm in my eyes.

"We didn't come to hurt you or steal from you. We need to get across the country. We need to get so far that we won't ever come back. So far that you will never see our faces again. Sound like a fair deal?" I asked him slowly, to get the point across. His face contorted in a snarl and then he nodded slowly. "We need a car." I said to the grumpy man. "And then we are gone. Forever."

He made a sound almost resembling a dog bark leading into his yelling. "You think you can just take a car? A working car? There are no working cars around here! They all worked when it first happened, but the ones out there blocking the roads are all rusted and ruined beyond any hopes of repair! You honestly think that I can just pull one of these fucking things out of my-" I put a bullet through the roof and he stopped talking, once again contorting his face briefly into a snarl. "I hate you Joel." He growled. "So I will get you your car. And if I ever see you here again, I will blow your head off with a sniper rifle from just out of your range. You won't see it coming." His mouth curled into a smile, thinking of his little scenario going on in his head.

"Focus here. I need you to help with the car finding." I smiled at the ugly man.

He nodded. "I fucking heard you the first time, you fucking fuck." His reply was filled with so much hatred that I wondered why I didn't just shoot him and skip all of the following him through stupid encounters with enemies that scared the shit out of me just to think about anyways… What made me follow the story so blindly?

"Hey Charlotte." I said softly. "Do you like Bill?"

"Hahahaha! That's a good joke." Charlotte replied, with a genuine and almost hardy laugh.

"Would you like to kill him? We can always just raid his hideout. The one at the church. Steal all of his belongings and skip ALL of the adventures through the highschool that gets us into danger…" I said, letting each sentence sink in with the mean, fat man. He began to panic as he realized that we actually knew more than he expected. "See Bill, I came to you first as a courtesy. I could have easily walked straight to the one car in the town that I know is in working condition. I didn't because we were friends once. But you and your hostility is really wearing my patience thin. Do I need to put you down?" I stared at the man and he slowly shook his head, panic now completely replacing the hostility that had been there before. I had him by the balls now and he knew it.

Charlotte turned to me to speak, but before she could say anything, I grabbed her chin and kissed her hard. She giggled as I let her go and Bill was thoroughly confused at this point. "This isn't how the story goes. The story goes that a nice man named Bill walks us to his hideout and then we talk. Once we talk, he helps us find a car and we leave, never to return… Lets play out that story as long as we can… If something changes, I can always still pump a bullet into your brain. You know I am a faster draw, so I wouldn't pull anything if I were you. This is a good chance to learn something about yourself here." I tossed him the pistol that I had been pointing at him. He grabbed it in mid air and held it between his two hands like a prayer, but he didn't dare point it at me, because I was holding two guns now and both were pointed at his face again. "Good boy." I smirked, speaking with a soft low voice. I knew I was his type, and I knew that would drive him crazier than anything. He holstered his new weapon and I holstered mine, only now picking myself off the floor and walking over to him to shake his hand. Charlotte was unhappy I knew, but I also knew that this man was a rude little bitch and if whipped just right, would happily bend over for us to use him as we pleased. He reluctantly gave me a hand to shake, and I used it to pull him into a big hug. The only resistance I got was a hard log in his pants and a gruff "oof" sound.

Bill walked us back to his not so secret hideout. We were in the church before the darkness stole away all vision in the night. Bill walked us in through the basement. I grabbed one of his two shotguns sitting by the door and took aim, feeling the weight in my hands. Bill blushed as I turned to look at him and ran my hand down the length of the gun. He was such a bitch when you just acknowledge that he is into you Joel. I wondered why he never tried that in the game. I looked over at a heap of scrap metal and smiled, grabbing a few handfuls for working on my guns. He ran over and showed me a small box with nails sticking out of it.

"Look at this. Pull the pin here, throw it, and wait 10 seconds, then whatever is around it is blown to smithereens!" He said with pride in his voice. He obviously spent a lot of time working on the contraption.

"I'll take 5." I said with a cocky as hell smile on my face. He turned and walked to the makeshift bar behind him and walked back with 4 more in his hands, casually giving me all of them. I saw a bow in the corner with a few broken arrows next to it and picked it up. The wanting us dead to sucking my cock in 5 minutes flat. I had told Charlotte to stay quiet and keep out of the way of Bill just in case. He was never very good around women, and I definitely didn't trust him around her, but as long as he was bending, I wouldn't hold back from fucking him over. Charlotte seemed drawn to the corner of the room where there was a pile of magazines next to a soft looking old lazy boy chair. I prayed she didn't sit in that chair. Bill and I sat at a table and talked about the car.

"Okay so there are cars all over, yes, but none of them work! The closest to running condition that I have needs a battery.. And the only battery that would be available and has a possibility of still running is the battery in the big truck that the army drove to the school. They set up a huge barricade and then one of them got infected.. It was before they knew how to deal with it, so they tried to treat them. You know how the story goes." He updated me on the situation I was well aware of. I smiled and nodded and then showed him the map. "See how the only path to get to the far side of the school is through the school?" I traced the route through the school with my finger. "And do you see all of the pathways around the school? They are blocked by fences and different things. We will need to move through the school quickly and quietly. The battery you are looking for? It's not in the truck anymore. I can't take the time to explain how I know that. You just have to trust me okay?"

He gave me a sideways look and shook his head. "It's in that truck! It's the only one I haven't been able to get to. I searched every other vehicle for a working battery years ago! There's no way that any of them have a working battery now." I nodded, realizing that this man was not going to change his mind. Tess knew me, She knew that when I said something was true, it was. This fat bastard wanted my cock up his ass, but he wouldn't listen to me, even if that was the outcome.

I sat back and nodded. "Fine, we do things your way for now. When I say run, you run though. Got it?" The man nodded reluctantly and then stood from the table.

"Let's just get this over. I don't like her being here." He pointed at Charlotte whom was standing in the corner, now looking at us and smiling slightly awkwardly. I motioned for her, and after some playing with the her shirt, she came running over to us. We walked out of the room and up to the sanctuary of the church. The doors had all been completely blocked off with boards and nails, along with most of the windows. Bill lead us to a single window next to the altar of the church that swung open when I pushed on it.

"Watch out. There are clickers back here that I never cleared out." He said nonchalantly before rolling his fat ass out the window and into the graveyard maze behind. We followed shortly afterwards, closing the window behind us.

I looked at Charlotte and smiled. "He is such an ass, isn't he?" She giggled and nodded vigorously. I chuckled under my breath and we began to sneak into the graveyard. The graveyard was a green pathway through high walls of concrete blocks, almost as if it was a maze. The pathway was overgrown with grass and vines grew all the way up the sides of the walls all around were clickers all over, luckily it was only clickers or we would have been fucked. We snuck on our hands and feet between the gravestones, hiding from the creatures as best we could. One gave me a sideways look, as if it heard me walking, so I put an arrow through its mouth and severed its spinal cord. It toppled to the ground and I was able to walk over and pick up the arrow easily. As the arrow slid from the mouth of the infected once human fungi, I watched the skin peel back in the back of the throat. The bones were visible through the gaping hole. I could see all the way through the split that I had created in the spine and as I pulled the arrow from it, the spinal cord got stuck to the arrowhead and some came out. I ended up holding an arrow with green and orange goo stuck to the end. I was fairly certain that spinal fluid was typically not green and orange, and the smell… I almost puked. I decided that from then on I would only pick up arrows that missed. I knew I would find enough arrows throughout the game to keep the bow useful. We kept sneaking through the graves. There were at least six clickers in total that we had to avoid. The last few of them were in a small clearing right next to the only exit. I pulled out my bow and fired the last shot, missing and hitting the ground behind a clicker. I am a great shot, but it's still a bow and arrow. The sights don't exactly line up perfectly.. The 2 clickers closest to the arrow turned to it and growled, then began flailing, trying to attack the small thing. We snuck behind them and I stabbed the last clicker in our way with my hunting knife. It toppled to the floor and we quietly made our way out of the gate. After a safe distance away from the church, I bent in half and started to laugh. "I missed with the bow." I choked out through my near tears laughing. Bill stabbed an infected that was drawn by my laughter.

"Stop giggling, you fucking moron. You're driving them to us!" He was right, but he was an asshole. And I think assholes are funny. I kept laughing hard. We were standing in an alleyway between backyards. The houses were fairly large, definitely would have been cozy before the world died. The yards were all fenced in by large concrete barriers on one side and a cozy wooden fence on the other, making it feel like a waterway of sorts. I laughed until three clickers came running from the fence ahead of us, screaming their song of death and violence and flailing in attack mode. I kept laughing until they got closer, Bill stuck one with his knife, Charlotte killed the other with hers, and the last jumped at me. I bashed in its head with the metal pipe with scissors on the end as my laughter slowly died down. It was funny.

I haven't missed before, much less had a missed shot work better than a hit. We snuck down the pathway to the next open gate, where the clickers had run from. It was empty now. Less work to deal with. Clickers weren't so hard to deal with as long as you know how to stay out of their way and use their hearing against them. I smiled and walked casually up to the back door of the house. There was only one infected in the house, so I killed it quickly and we scavenged for supplies. "Charlotte. Collect everything you see." What was to come would be much more difficult than this, so we needed everything that we could get our hands on. The house had been a pristine white before the world had gone to shit. The paint had held up pretty well, although the Chimney had collapsed in onto the upper floor of the house, making the stairwell just about as useless as having Bill around was.

As if on my personal mental cue, Bill started yelling at Charlotte again from the other room. I walked in and found the two of them on the floor, Bill pinning her against the floor with a raised fist. "Get off of me!" Charlotte screamed, terror thick in her voice. Not one fucking reason would be good enough to explain this away. I dove at the man and tore him away from her, then punched him over and over again. "Stop" was the only thing he could manage to get out between blow after blow from my fists. I broke not only his skin, but my own. I lost control of myself and took all of my anger out on the bloody pulp that his face was slowly becoming with each swing. I beat his face into a pulp and then once he stopped moving and the shrill noises of pain stopped escaping what was left of his mouth, I sat back and turned to see if Charlotte was okay.

She was looking at me with horror in her eyes. "I just.. I just wanted to see how well the bombs worked.. I was going to throw one into the yard we have to go into next… He tried to hit me." She teared up and I pulled her into my bloody arms. We sat together, just quietly sobbing for a while. As the emotions stopped, I growled at the body of the once rude man. He wouldn't hurt another soul again. The game was never this bad. He didn't die here. He kept going with us until we left the town, and he went back to his church… He didn't die at all before. But I wanted him dead, and so he fell. He tried to hurt my Charlotte. I wouldn't let that happen. I didn't have a choice in some parts of the game, because I knew what was coming, but I would always get revenge for her. I would fucking end them before they had a chance to hurt her.. But I didn't know if I would always get that chance.

Charlotte leaned into my arm and nuzzled into me with her wet, red face. I held her in the crook of my arm and waited for her to look at me before kissing her forehead. "He was a bad man. You don't have to worry about him anymore. He won't hurt you. Nobody will while I am with you." The look in my eyes showed just how true the statement was. I wouldn't let a thing touch her if I could help it, even if it meant dying to keep her safe. We were sitting together, huddled in a ball on the center of an old oval rug that you would find in your grandma's basement. The walls were chipping paint and the windows were only, mostly intact. The body that was on the floor beside us had blood pooling around what used to be his head. It looked straight out of the walking dead when Glenn was killed. Comic or show version. And the mood in the room was just as bleak. I stood and helped the girl to her feet and held her close to me so that she couldn't see the mess on the floor.

We walked out to the backyard and then stood in the fresh air. Charlotte pulled away from my arms, stumbled to the grass and then threw up. I walked to a nearby bucket filled with filthy water inside and poured the blackish sludge down my arms. It was disgusting, but it was better than the blood that had dried onto my fists and clung to my arm hairs. I could feel the mixture of sludge and blood slowly cracking and rinsing off of each arm. My stomach churned as the sludge plopped onto the ground with a splat. The freakin stuff was more mold and goop than water. I wasn't worried about long term health effects, only the ones that make me sick now. Video Games don't have repercussions for being shot in the long term. It's obvious that I wouldn't die from mold poisoning, but I might throw up a few times. I turned back to the girl with most of the blood gone, only leaving a few red stained hairs and red streaks on my skin.

Bill was dead. I killed him. I just needed a yellow jumpsuit and a katana… and tits. I chuckled softly at my own mental joke and then looked at Charlotte for a quick diagnosis of her thoughts on me. She was staring at her own hands. She was staring at the marks from where his fingers had buried into her soft skin. She was scared. For the first time since we began playing, she was scared of what people could do to her. Scared of how people can hurt her and scared of being human. I was scared for her too. The thought weighed on my mind that she had been a machine not long ago and now to feel all of these terrible human emotions may make her want to go back. That scared me most of all.

I took her hand and she looked up at me, her face blank. Void of emotion or care. It seemed like she had shut off her emotions completely to deal with the pain. I hoped that tactic would work on a machine. Maybe they were that much different from humans. Maybe she was fine. The tear marks that stained her face dried and cracked as she walked by my side. I lead her to a bus parked in the backyard of the house. We climbed onto the hood and then onto the roof. Taking our time and moving slowly. We were in no danger in the yard now, but soon we would be again, and after the emotions we were both feeling, it wasn't the best idea to jump straight back into action. We walked across a wooden plank that lead to one of the coolest treehouses ever. It would have been amazing just to hang out in this small, tree-bound hut, but we were still reeling. Charlotte jumped down from the treehouse to a branch below, then to the ground. The infected in the yard all turned and ran at her. I readied my gun, but left her to take care of herself. There were 5 of them. 2 were clickers.

She threw the bomb that bill had died over into the oncomming crowd and then ducked behind the tree.

The explosions shook the whole treehouse and almost sent me toppling over the edge. The shrapnel had flown from the point of detonation and torn apart every half living organ in the bodies of one of the clickers and two more of the infected. The other clickers arm had blown off and it was screaming shrill and high pitched in what I could only assume was pain. The last normal infected had no legs. The whole bottom half of the abomination had been cleanly dissected from the top. It was slowly inching forwards the tree. Charlotte walked out from her hiding place, shoved her knife through the head of the infected, reaching up at her. She then walked to the clicker and pushed the knife into the roof of its mouth, hitting the brain cleanly and shutting the howling mess up. I hopped down from the tree and nodded.

"Good kills." I admired the black, gunky blood that was now splattered across the side of the off-white house. The blood was so thick and clotted, that globs stuck together with organs and flesh. The sticky black mess slowly rolled down the side of the house piece by piece in a gruesome work of art. It looked like postmodern art. That kind that of scribbly stuff, with shades of the same color in random patterns. She moved to my side and watched the mess fall down with me. The grass was just as bad, but more scorch marks than guts. I handed her a pistol and put an arm around her shoulder, still looking at the wall. She looked down at the gun.

"What's this for?" she said without looking up from the weapon.

"Whatever you need it for." I replied softly. "I trust you. Funny thing is, I know how the future looks most of the time, but with him, I still never trusted him. Even knowing that he would try to get us what we need. That he would do what we asked as one of the 'good guys'… I never liked him. He was an asshole."

She smiled and laughed at my choice of words. "No he took it in the asshole." she said with a smirk and we both started to chuckle. Laughing about pain was the only way to stay sane in this cruel world. Even in my daily life I felt the need to laugh or cry at pain, and crying makes my nose run, so why not just laugh instead?

The smiles faded quickly and I turned and walked away. "Leave the past behind you. If you hold onto it, it'll eat you up faster than the freaks you painted onto the wall." I reached out a hand behind me as I walked for the gate. I was surprised to find Charlotte's hand in mine before I took a full step. She walked with me, gun in one hand and my hand in her other. "I have a shortcut. We can take the shortcut and run into any number of infected… I really don't even know how many… Or we can go the same way we were supposed to and then we'll run into a full hourde and a bloater and all kinds of shit that we can kill for fun. It's up to you." I looked at the girl while opening the gate into the alleyway. "We have enough ammo that we can do whatever we want really."

She thought about the offer and then nodded slowly, walking down the alley with me. "Can we start into the horde and turn back? Or once we start, do we have to go all the way through?"

I thought about the question for a second. "After a certain point, there is definitely no going back, but we would get to kill like five or six infected and get back without a problem."

"I need to vent more than that." She muttered and sighed. "Let's just go through the game like its supposed to be." She looked at me and I smiled.

"Let's." I nodded.

We walked towards the front gate of the school, coming into view at the end of the alley. I handed her the extra clips for her gun. I had 3 different guns and, at this point, all of them had ammo enough to murder a small village. I pulled out my revolver and my 9mm and walked for the school gate. I honestly felt like a villain just because of the placement of my anger, but I had anger and I was going to shoot up this school with a smile on my face. Charlotte took aim and shot the first infected by the gate down in seconds. I ran into the gates and the war began. 4 more infected hurled their bodies at full speed towards us. I dodged between rotting cars and Charlotte stood outside the gates, firing at the oncoming squadron of the dead. She killed 2 more before they made it to my hiding spot. I put the silencer on my pistol and began shooting at them from my hidden position behind the car. The rest of them fell quickly, none taking more than 2 bullets to kill. The battle was over almost as fast as it began. This was the easy part.

We walked towards the school, but with no path in site, I had to lift her on top of a nearby school bus. She kicked down a ladder and we climbed over the bus and into the school lot. "This is where it's not possible to go back from." I smiled at the girl and confidently started walking forward. She gave me a sideways smirk and followed. I enjoyed being able to be violent in a constructive way. It felt good. I walked to the door of the school, then before touching it, turned and climbed through a window, forcing it open and then pulling Charlotte through behind me. She looked confused why the window entrance at first, but then I showed her the chains holding the door shut from the inside.

"Okay. I thought you just felt like climbing through windows would be more fun. I closed the window behind us and just as I did, a horde of hundreds of infected turned the corner and flung themselves at the glass.

"Shhhh. They might know we're here." I whispered comically. She giggled and we began to look around. I found a whole bunch more rounds of ammo in the room. There were boxes of ammo laying around. The school had been the rescue center and the main base for the military when the world went to shit. There was a military truck smashed through the wall of the gymnasium and ammo, guns and other goodies scattered about. The only thing protecting it all is the horde outside that we had avoided. I would have said we were lucky, but it was all planned out. I got all the ammo that I could carry and then walked to the hallway. There were infected scattered about inside the building, but most were outside. I took aim with my silenced pistol and put them all out of their misery. We scavenged as we walked until we got to the Gym. "So as the asshole would have said, we need the battery from that truck. The one that smashed through the wall." I explained, with one hand on the door, more to keep it from opening than to push it open.

"Now once we go inside there will be a boss battle with the first bloater that they introduce in the game. It's going to be a difficult battle… unless you aim for the pockets of puss on his body and his head. Dodge anything he throws by like five feet or you'll be hurt." I shoved opened the doors and ran inside without another word. The doors across the room burst open and a big ass monster like thing just comes bursting out of the closet like the start of a song in rent. The thing was a human shaped figure with gray dead skin. It was covered in these yellow pockets of puss that almost seemed to glow. It looked like it had to be at least 450 lbs. It stomped out into the Gym and I got out my shotgun and opened fire. Charlotte caught it in the eye with her pistol and my shotgun blast ripped two of the puss pockets right off of its flesh, tearing them apart and causing the mixture of spores and yellow goop to fly around the beast. I waited to see how he would react. It reached for another pocket of spores and grabbed hold, then ripped it out of his own flesh and hurled it across the room at us. I dove out of the way, rolling to safety. Charlotte was far enough away that she only had to step back.

"Watch yourself, Da-Al" She corrected herself while aiming down her sites. She shot it again in the other eye and it grunted, then tossed another ripped sack of flesh at where we were standing before. It couldn't see us…

"Good shots Charlotte!" I said, then blasted the shotgun again, ripping even more of the yellow meat sacks from the blob of rotting human flesh. There were only a few left. I lit a molotov and threw it at the giant, watching the cascade of flames as the liquid poured over the body of the beast. It took a moment, but the monster fell, the flames devouring its flesh. I walked to the closet that it had burst from and picked up the loot. Plenty to do plenty with. The guy had obviously grabbed everything he could fit in the closet with him and just hid there until he died. What a miserable way to go.

I walked to the front of the truck slowly and lifted the hood. "Oh my! I never expected this to happen! There's no battery in this truck! It looks like the only reason we came into this school was to kill a bunch of things and get redirected out the windows above the bleachers!" I said with as dry a tone as I could, to remove all doubt of my sarcasm. I walked over to the bleachers which were pushed in, so that it was a flat wall to the windows about 15 feet off the ground. I lifted Charlotte up to the top of the seats and then got started climbing up myself. I had made it about half way up before three sets of hands grabbed me, yanking me backwards. The only thing I heard was Charlotte's scream. I fell backwards in freefall for just a split second. The hands began to pull different directions. One collapsed under me as I fell and the others pulled at my shirt from either side. I landed on top of the still partly living infected and attempted to jump to my feet before the two others had a chance to converge over me.

I heard a pop and one of them dropped. I rolled over the body and scrambled to my feet. Then another pop, but both of the remaining infected seemed fine. I jumped back and reached for a weapon, finding my rifle tucked on my back. I pulled it out of its spot by the barrel and smashed in the closer infecteds face. The last abomination on the floor had gotten up now and I was able to catch a glimpse of Charlotte, whom was frantically trying to reload. I pulled the stock of the rifle from the brains of the dead thing and turned the gun to fire. I felt the blood on the handle as the rifle slipped from my hands and hit the floor. I grabbed for another weapon, but it was on top of me. I felt the explosion of pain as the fucker ripped into my flesh, tearing a chunk out of my arm with filthy fucking fingernails as I held his head back. I wouldn't be bit. I held on, my determination shining through the pain until I pulled my revolver out of my belt. I pushed the thing back and just as I was aiming, I heard a pop and the fucker dropped dead. Charlotte had saved me again. She has a history of things like that. I growled and used a medkit to patch up my bloody mess. Within a few seconds, my arm was fully healed and the bandages sank into my skin, disappearing forever. Video Games are weird… Not that I don't appreciate being automatically healed, but the whole vanishing bandages thing is bizarre.

Charlotte helped me climb the bleachers and we climbed out the window. There was a walkway cover below us that functioned well as an escape route. We walked out of the school right over the heads of the horde below. They didn't even seem to notice us for the most part. We walked slowly and quietly over the awning until we were at the edge of the school. I hopped down over the fence and then helped Charlotte down behind me. We were in an alleyway with infected all around. There was a ladder on a fence not too far from where we were, so we both ran. I pushed her up the ladder and then followed her over the wooden fence, leaving the ladder in place. The infected would guard it without learning to climb it, so our path was safe. I hugged the girl at my side and held her close. "That was crazy." I muttered under my breath.

"It was very fast. Everything seemed to all happen at once. Was that how the game was before?"

I shook my head. "Nothing is ever as urgent in a video game unless there's a visual time limit." I smiled. "This world may never even give a time limit, even if the game does. It would break the immersion too much." we stood for a minute longer to catch our breath before walking into the house. The house itself looked like every other house on the block. There was nothing special about the place at all. But as we opened the back door to try and enter the house, the smell had us taking a few steps back. "I forgot to mention. This is bills partner. Welcome to his final resting place... " I choked out between deep gasps for clean air. I pulled the sliding glass door all the way open to let the smell out a bit before attempting to enter the house again. The smell was terrible. There was no way that anyone could be alive in the house without needing to air it out. Not even the turned would stay here. I walked in, my face covered with my sleeve, and still coughed. There was a rotting corpse hanging from a noose in the center of the living room. A wooden chair was knocked over by its feet. It was clear what had happened here.

"What happened to him? Who did that to him?" Charlotte said in awe as she walked in behind me, taking her first look at the corpse. I looked at her and saw the genuine look of curiosity on her face.

"He did it to himself. He tied the knot, he killed himself." I walked to the kitchen. On the counter was a note. I walked back to Charlotte who was still staring at the body. I read the note out loud so that she could understand who I killed for her.

"Well, Bill, I doubt you'd ever find this note cause you were too scared to ever make it to this part of town. But if for some reason you did, I want you to know I hated your guts. I grew tired of this shitty town and your set-in-your-ways attitude. I wanted more from life than this and you could never get that. And that stupid battery you kept moaning about - I got it. But I guess you were right. Trying to leave this town will kill me. Still better than spending another day with you. Good Luck, Frank" I finished the note with a solemn look at the girl. "He was not a good person. He drove people to do terrible things just because he made everyone around him hate him so much. He caused this. He could have changed and then he would have been loved just as much as you love me, but he chose to be a jerk. He chose to hurt you. He didn't realize it, but that was how he chose to die. This is how he chose to be remembered. This is who Bill really was. Don't worry about what I did to him. Don't worry because he will never have that choice again. He lost the opportunity to choose being mean. He went over so many lines, but touching you has a consequence. I am that consequence. Please remember that he meant nothing to anyone, but you mean the world to me. You mean this world and all the others to me. You are worth so much." a single tear fell from my eye as I dove into my feelings headfirst. Charlotte waited for me to finish speaking before bounding to me and wrapping my waist in a hug.

"Thank you for protecting me." She said, her eyes starting to moisten as well. I hugged her tightly for a few minutes, before the smell got to me again and I walked her to the garage. We opened the door and stepped inside of the small one and a half car garage with a small pickup truck sitting almost untouched.

"And, as he said he got the battery in his note, it is already in the truck." I smiled at the girl, then walked her to the door. "It wont start, so you need to pop the clutch. I'll push." She nodded and hopped into the driver seat, knowing exactly what to do without any further instruction. I raised the garage door, tossing the cheap aluminum door over my head with no problems at all. I ran to the back of the truck and began to push. Charlotte had already put it into neutral, so the truck started rolling forwards. I got her down the driveway, but the car came to a rest at the street. She turned towards a hill at the end of the block and I ran back to the truck to keep pushing. As we moved the car slowly, infected started coming out of the woodwork. Just as I got into the groove of moving the car, one of the fucking infected would jump me and it would slow back down to a stop again. I eventually got to the point that I was pushing the car with my back, while pumping bullets out with my shotgun to keep the fuckers back. Then the hill came and I fell on my ass. The car rolled down the hill and started up about half way down. I jumped to my feet as 3 more reached for me. They missed me by just a bit and I was forced to run down the hill half as fast as the car had just to get to the now stopped truck. I dove into the back of the bed and seconds later the three infected toppled down the hill and landed where the truck had been parked. We took off down the street and disappeared into the setting sun before any of them could even stand back up. "Goodbye and good riddance!" I shouted out the window into the cold evening air.


	11. Home

Chapter 10: Home

I sat up, once again in my living room. I had been gone for days. The game was longer than I remembered. In fact, I forgot what came next completely. But now I was in my apartment. I stared at the blank wall, focusing my energy on remembering what day it was. Things like that got confusing in Charlotte's world. For the sake of not calling it Charlotte's world, I decided I would need to name the magical computer realm with something short and yet magical. Something easy, yet descriptive. I wanted that to be something I talked with Charlotte about the next time that I went in. I wanted her to help me name it. She lived there, so it was only fair that a native would choose the name. I smiled to myself and got up to go to the restroom. Only 10 minutes had passed in this world. I had been gone for days, I expected at least 11 minutes, but just 10 had passed. This was surely some crazy kind of magic. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, put on my pjs and went to bed.

The next morning I woke up and headed to work. The drive to work was beautiful in scenery, going from city to city, there wasn't much between them but farmlands and beauty. I rolled my windows down and felt the breeze flow through my car all the way there. My car meant the world to me. I called it my baby, and drove it like a racecar. It was my favorite thing in life, right after my computer. I flew down the interstate at 80mph, weaving between cars going between 50 and 60 and feeling every inch of my body fill with excitement and adrenaline. The rush was almost as much fun as taking a shotgun to an infected skull. My head bobbed as the rush came to a halt. There was a cop about a quarter mile up. I breaked until I was matching the speed of the cars around me, and then picked it back up to 5 over that. Please note: If I am the guy that you hate on the freeway, then you're the asshole I hate on side streets that goes 20 mph in a 35 zone just because you feel like it. You hold up traffic and you are, in turn, driving just as recklessly as I do. Asshole. When I got to work, I leapt from my car, ran into the building and clocked in as soon as I could. I sat down at my desk and then melted. I spent the next 8 hours waiting to go home. I don't talk to people at work. Everyone in the office is women with at least a 10 year lead on me. I don't have anything against middle-aged women, my mom was one of those, but I don't exactly make friends at work either. I fixed maybe one computer issue all day and just bullshitted for the rest of the time.

Work wasn't necessarily boring, however when the clock hit 5, I let out a sigh of relief. I ran to my car and started her up. The engine purred and I drove. The way home was always more congested than the way to work, so I was driving slow. I stuck to the speed limit and kept in the left lane, hoping to bypass some of the moronic drivers who decided that half the limit is a safe speed. I was driving through an intersection, and then I was upside down… I blinked and groaned. "What the fuck?" I muttered as I found myself hanging from my seat belt, suspended over the roof of my car. The seconds before returned to me in screaming detail as my mind flashed back to the crash that happened moments before. Halfway through the intersection, a van pulled out infront of me. They were still mid turn when I about 5 feet away. I had honked, but it didn't help. The front of my car collided with the side of theirs and the right side of my car lifted off the ground. My poor baby was thrown onto her side, still moving at about 30mph. She rolled over the center median and crashed into two other cars, leaving dents in the roof only inches above my head. The windows were shattered as the car bounced off the oncoming traffic and back into the middle of my lane. The final motions of the car caused it to tip upside down and land in the center of the road. As my memory caught up with me, I reached for the ceiling. I put one hand against the shattered glass covered roof and unbuckled myself with the other. I dropped onto my side, pieces of glass getting stuck to my shirt and cutting my hands all to hell. I heard a voice from outside as I looked around the broken body of the car for any sign of my cell phone. I picked up the phone once I found it, buried under shattered glass and what was left of my airbag.

"Hey. Are you alive in there?" A voice called from the darkness outside. I reached a hand out of the hole where my window used to be and put a thumbs up, then slowly moved my way out of the wreckage, avoiding the broken shards of glass still sticking out from where the window used to be. I got myself all the way out of my baby, stood up, and then fell back over. My legs had turned to Jelly. The stranger who asked if I was alive sat down next to me and told me to stay seated. I nodded and then turned to the side and threw up.

"Thank you. I can't walk." I managed to say before laying back down in the road. I looked around me and saw my car. She was mangled, upside down and broken all over. The driver side of the car had been ripped away as the car ground against the road there. I was in shock and couldn't form propper thoughts, but my very first one that made sense was "I need to tell Charlotte." The stranger helped me to the trunk of the van that had hit me. They opened the trunk and laid me down in it. It took me a few minutes to figure out, but there were other cars involved too. I looked at the mess. The van that had hit me then swerved off the road to the shoulder and crashed into a speed limit sign. The side of the van where my car had collided with it was completely destroyed. The car may have been driveable, but the damage would cost thousands to repair. I was taken away in an ambulance as the road crews began to clean up the mess.

The next day I was home, in incredible amounts of pain, but without any serious damage to my body. I stayed in bed for so long that I lost track of time. Any movement was so bad that It sent shockwaves of pain down my body. I could barely move my toes. Eventually I managed to get up and walk to the couch where I sat still and didn't move for almost another hour. Just to get out of bed took longer than going to work and coming home would have. It was already 7pm. I groaned at my pain and Charlotte jumped to life on my screen, which was turned off moments before.

"Al! Are you okay?!" She practically yelled at me.

"Sometimes I think I may just be going crazy, and these are my delusions of grandeur." I responded to the pixelated person before me. "Im fine. I just hurt all over… My car is totalled." I sighed deeply and lowered my head.

"Come in here and let me hug you." she pouted at me. "I want to make you feel all better."

"That sounds like a good plan, except I don't want to move. It hurts too much." I groaned. She turned her head behind her, grabbed the mouse cursor and dragged it to my shortcut to the game, then tabbed over it, so all I had to do was click or press enter. I smiled and she blew me a kiss, then disappeared from the screen. "She is something else." I muttered to myself under my breath, then leaned forward just far enough to touch the enter key on my keyboard. The second my hand touched it, the world melted around me. I watched my hand in front of me as the pixelated world formed around me, a car. It was the truck that we had gotten working from Bill's town. I was driving now and we were heading down a country road. I felt myself pushing on the breaks as I gained my bearings. Charlotte was sitting in the backseat with a magazine in her hands.

"These guys have HUGE cocks. I don't know how you would even walk around with that between your legs." She said in a suggestive tone. I slowed the car to a stop, turned to look at her and then raised an eyebrow.

"You're interested in huge cocks now?" My lip curled into a smirk and she looked me dead on, straight faced.

"Just one. I missed you." I chuckled and she let out a smile. "Did you miss me?" She whispered, climbing halfway to the front of the car.

"I missed you. I was in a car accident and you were the most important thing to me during that time. I wanted nothing more than to let you know I was okay, even though you probably didn't even notice I was gone until I didn't get home after work." I said, turning back to face forwards and start up the truck again. "At least I know I'm not too afraid to get back into a car… Not like I had much choice here." I smiled. "You're supposed to be sleeping anyways. The next chapter cant start without you being asleep." I said almost sharply.

She giggled and ran a finger down my chest from behind me. "You sure that you want to move on so soon? Like I said, I missed you." she said softly, almost whispering in my ear. The thoughts she was implanting in my mind were not the kind you have while driving. I pulled over to the side of the road. The doors were locked, so we couldn't leave the car. It was supposed to be just scenery around us, for driving past. I could see the edge of the world through the trees to my left.

Charlotte climbed into the front of the truck with me and only then I noticed she was completely undressed, besides her black lace underwear. I felt myself getting worried. "What if I'm still sore from the accident?" I asked her.

She smiled and kissed me hard, then responded "You weren't in an accident in this world. Do you feel hurt?"

I moved my body around and shook my head, then grabbed her by her hair and pulled her head back, so that I could bite her neck. My tongue rolled down her soft flesh and then I suddenly sunk my teeth into her, causing a soft squeak from her parting lips. Her eyes closed as my nose pushed against her chin, closing her mouth and then I kissed her hard. She sunk into the passenger seat and I climbed over her, pushing down on her body and leaning the seat back as far as it went. Her silky bottoms were the first thing to disappear and my clothes followed closely behind. I felt my length slip into her wet opening.

We were driving down the highway, heading towards a huge city. The outbound lanes were all blocked up too much to even walk through the mess, but the other side of the freeway was almost empty. We made our way in with only a few cars in our path. "Welcome to Pittsburgh." I practically yelled at the girl behind me. She sat up and poked her head between the seats, looking at the buildings. With awe in her eyes, she quickly scrambled to the front seat. "Buckle up. Now." I said sternly to her as she stared out at the landscape.

"Wow… Pittsburgh is beautiful." she said softly, staring at the outline of the city against the water out the side of the bridge we were crossing.

I burst out laughing heartilly and then scratched her head gently. "No. No it isn't. It's actually the most ugly place I have ever been. The people here were rude and evil before the world went to shit.. If we didn't have to be here, we wouldn't be here." I grew solemn enough that she just sat in pure confusion.

"Are they that bad?" She asked, genuinely worried now.

"Honestly, yes. Yes they are. And they scare me enough that I wish we could skip this whole situation, but the show must go on… and I don't know how we got here, we just kinda ended up here. If I started driving somewhere else, I would probably end up getting us in more trouble." I trailed off, getting extremely worried now. I was having flashbacks of my car accident and was not at all excited for what was next. Then it happened.

A man stepped out in front of us. He was limping and covered in blood. All down his left side. He waved at us and yelled "STOP! PLEASE!" I grit my teeth and rolled down my window, slowing down a little bit.

Charlotte looked at the man, worried. "Is he okay? What happened to him?"

"This city happened." I said, then shot him through the heart. Charlotte let out a small scream and looked at me worriedly. He fell to the ground, a shotgun dropped out from his clothes and we kept driving. I slowed down and pulled over to the side of the freeway. "Yes. He was bad." I pulled out my hunting rifle and tried to open the door. The lock was still latched. Fuck. "Let's just get this over with. Buckle up." I said sourly, then pushed my foot down on the accelerator. I let go of the wheel and Charlotte screamed. The car veered slightly towards the right as the speedometer hit 60mph. It kept climbing until a bus rolled down a hill on our right and collided with the back of the truck. The truck was knocked onto its side and we slid forward, unable to correct the course. We slammed into the front of a small grocery store and the momentum didn't stop until we had smashed through all of the aisles in the store.

I opened my eyes for the first time after the initial collision as we came to a complete deadstop. I leapt from the car as fast as I could, shooting the first three men without questioning a thing. They dropped dead almost as one. Charlotte crawled out of the car and I pushed her behind a fruit stand, then put a finger to my lips. She nodded and quietly pulled her gun out. I shook my head, then held my hand up, motioning her to wait. She pouted, then nodded. I poked my head out from around the fruit stand and immediately shots burst out. Yelling and gunfire filled the shop and then it stopped. "Did we get 'em?" I heard one ask. I smiled and said calmly, "Yup. You win." and then tossed a lit molotov over our protective barrier and listened as the man screamed in pain, writhing and dying slowly as his skin cracked apart. The air smelled like burnt chicken. I wheeled around the wooden barrier and fired shots at anything that moved, hitting one guy in the knee, another in the head and the last shot through a window across the street. I let the guy who I shot in the knee fall to the ground, then put another bullet in his head. Then there was silence. I grabbed Charlotte by the arm and picked her up, we rushed to the street, looked around for more of them and when there was nothing, we scuttled into an alley. I lifted a rollup garage door and let Charlotte slide under. I followed quickly, hearing shouting from where we had left the mess of the dead.

I closed the door behind us, shutting us into the darkness. Charlotte had her flashlight out before I could even turn to face her. I heard her gasp as the light flicked on. "I…" she muttered softly and I moved to her side to give her a hug. She leaned into my body. "Is this what you meant when you called them evil?" She said, genuine disgust heavy in her tone.

"Yeah. This is actually. This is exactly what I meant." I muttered. We were standing in a meat locker. In the center of the small room was a metal table with a human corpse laid out flat on it. The clothes had all been removed, and the head, hands and feet had been cleanly removed. The walls of the room were comprised of shelves of human body parts, clothing and accessories. The parts were all put in jars or coolers, labeled with things like "White meat, arms" and "Green eyes." the clothing was all folded and laid out in piles by article. The worst part wasn't that they had began to eat human meat to survive, the worst was that they thrived in it. They would never have made it this far as a civilization without this source of sustenance. The human race had never scared me more than it did in this moment.

We booked it. We ran out of the building, and into the empty street beyond. We ran for about 3 blocks and then hid in a mess of abandoned cars to catch our breath. The mix of feelings, from disgust to excitement made my stomach queasy.

Charlotte looked me over and then asked "What are these people? Where are the soldiers?"

"Not all cities have soldiers anymore. Some of them fought back, and not all of them with the good guys side of the fireflies. These guys are the winners, but they lost their humanity along the way." I sighed, explaining slowly between breathes.

She nodded and her face contorted a bit. "So they are bad guys for the sake of being bad guys?" She asked, a bit confused.

I leaned over, with my hand on the hood of a car while I caught my breath. Charlotte watched me, catching her breath much faster and then going to a nearby bus to scavenge for things. She came back holding a book while I was just getting ready to go. "Look!" She giggled, holding up the book. "It has some good ones in it!"

The cover read "Jokes Galore!" and it was about 60 or 70 pages long. The trip we were making seemed to extend about 4 mental days in that split second. "What kind of good jokes?" I asked, hopefully.

She opened to the first page and read aloud, as if reading to a classroom. "What do you call a cow with no legs?" She looked up at me for a second, then went back to reading. "Ground beef!" She practically yelled, laughing so hard I was amazed that nobody found us. "What do you call a cow with 3 legs?" she continued, then once again, waited as if for a response, then spouted "Tri-tip!" She burst out laughing again. The pure joy on her face was more than enough to get me laughing as well. I smiled at the girl with the keys to my heart as she read another terrible joke from the book. "Why does a seagull fly over the sea?" She skipped the pause this time, but continued with a confused face. She spoke slower as she tried to unravel the mystery of the humor. "Because if it flew over the bay it would be a bagel? I don't.. I don't get it."

I smiled and chuckled. "What part, dear?"

"What is a Seagull and what is a bagel?" she asked. Her eyes always filled with such hope that I had never seen when she asked me about things from my world. In this world there are no animals, there are no baked goods. You get your rations of slop and you smile about it. She had never been outside this world and I barely knew how to explain it to her.

I smiled and thought for a moment, then took her hand. "Let's go find some Bagels so that the joke is funny when I explain it." She gladly followed me and we headed straight for the barricade down the street.

The checkpoints had been set up by soldiers to monitor incoming and outgoing traffic from all major cities. They were each made of a thick outer layer of concrete, then a center walkway all the way around, and a chain link fence with barbed wire all the way around the tops of both fences. The problem with them was that once the soldiers were gone for whatever reason, the fences would provide shelter to anything that found its way inside them. New people usually assume that the checkpoints and barricades mean soldiers to protect them, but usually that isn't the case. Sometimes it was these monsters, and sometimes it was just a whole horde of infected that overwhelmed the soldiers. Checkpoints and major cities tended to be either the safest place to be, or the least safe place. It all depended on what side of the wall you were on and what was inside the walls.

I walked towards the barricade with Charlotte's hand in mine and then ducked behind a rotting car as I heard voices from beyond the checkpoint. The city was destroyed as much as it had been 10 years ago. It hadn't changed much since my last visit. I hadn't actually visited the city, but Joel had. My memories and his merged together so flawlessly, that sometimes I had a hard time telling them apart. I knew that Charlotte had to feel the same way about Ellie. It felt like we were one person that lived two lives. And when I left the game, His memories faded, but stayed in my mind. The memories of this place from both my personal experience and the experiences that Joel remembered, were equally awful. The city was a hell hole. This game made it look beautiful, but even with the decay of the buildings, the city had gross and inhumane humans living inside and it made this place more dangerous than most others. I listened closely as the voices came closer to us, echoing off the decrepit landscape and giving us a very clear shot of what they were saying.

"Look out. They said there's a monster in the streets around here." The first guards voice said.

"BULLSHIT! It's just some tourist with a vendetta." Another voice replied to the first.

"Nobody has seen it and lived to tell about it. It kills with bullets and knives, but it just vanishes into thin air again before anyone can get close enough to witness it. There's always a trail of dead bodies, but never any sign of anything living." The first voice said, putting on a spooky voice to try and scare his friend.

I whispered to Charlotte "I wonder how much I can change the storyline… We have made some pretty drastic changes already, want to make our own ghost story?"

A smirk crossed her face and she nodded. I slipped the gas mask out of my bag. "Get ready to shoot the skeptical guy as soon as he pulls a gun on me. Okay?" We smiled and nodded to each other with our own devious smiles on our faces. This was going to be fun. I watched the two guards as they walked down the main path between the cars. Charlotte climbed on top of the abandoned bus down the road, pulled a blanket over her and leveled her silenced pistol at the men. I slipped the gas mask over my face and snuck up on the duo, using the cars to get as close as I could without them hearing or seeing a thing. I grabbed the first guy that I saw and growled in his ear. "Don't you dare struggle." I whispered softly. He let out a fairly loud squeal as I grabbed him, and his buddy turned with gun up, pointing it at my hidden face. "Put down the gun." I said to the man, my voice not quite as muffled as it was distorted by the masks filters. I pointed a finger gun at the man and he gave me a smirk. "So the ghost is just some asshole in a mask?" I put my thumb down on my finger gun, and "Bang." Charlotte shot him through the heart. He dropped dead with a thud and the man I was holding hostage squirmed in my arms, not touching his gun out of fear. Charlotte had a silencer, so the gunshot made no sound.

I pushed my mask up against the side of his face and whispered softly, but roughly. "I want you to give a message to whoever finds you. The ghost you were talking about is a myth. I am a god. I will never die. But, If you aim your gun at me, you will. And if you shoot at me, you die slowly. I want you to continue your rounds, and when you return your friends will all be dead. Do not try to stop me. Do not try to be a hero. You eat humans. You deserve to be executed, just like the monsters under your bed… But I need someone to tell the living about me. Of my power. I want you to tell them how I kill with a look, and how I end lives faster than they can imagine. Not one single person will see my face and live. Not one." I lifted my mask and licked the side of his face. He clenched his eyes shut and whimpered like a hurt puppy, not moving an inch. "Don't look at me." I whispered into the ear of the man, then let go of him and vanished. He stood awkwardly for a second, then asked if I was still there. When he got no answer he turned and looked around for me. I smiled to myself. I had just slipped into a building through a broken window, but now he was panicked. I could see him deciding whether to turn and run back into the checkpoint to warn his friends we were coming, or if he would do as I said and leave. It took him a second, but with tears streaming from his eyes, he kept walking. He stepped right over the body of his buddy and marched right out of sight. Charlotte and I met back up outside the checkpoint and smiled at each other again. "Now to kill everyone we can, to prove this legend true. Deal?"

Charlotte looked at the body and then at the gate. "First I need to know exactly what you said to him." She looked back at me interested. "I couldn't hear from where I was."

"I told him that I was no ghost. I was a god. I told him that I couldn't die, that I wouldn't no matter how hard they tried. I told him that I needed a messenger, and he is lucky to be picked. And then I shot his friend with my finger and vanished. That had to have been the most terrifying moment of his life." I chuckled.

Charlotte nodded. "Oh it was. I couldn't hear, but I saw quite clearly… When you licked his face, he peed his pants. Like not a little bit, but his whole bladder just emptied. It was fabulous. No wonder he left instead of running back through the gates." She giggled at the thought. I laughed along.

We quiteded down and then found ourselves walking into the compound. The scene in front of us was straight out of a movie. There were guards all over, scattered through the complex. All of them had weapons and all of them were clumped together talking over fires lit in trash cans. The main building was off to our left. It was an old bookstore. The shelves were still in tact mostly, but they were covered in ammo, food and other items while the books lay in a pile to be burned in the metal bins outside. One of the younger guards beside one of the flaming bins ran into the building, brought out two more books and tossed them into the pillar of fire as well. They really weren't human. I didn't feel bad about killing them at all. I hid with Charlotte behind one of the decayed cars that had been left on the inside of the fence. It had probably been running when the soldiers were still in power. At this point, I had scavenged a silencer for every gun that I had in my possession except the shotgun, including Charlotte's pistol. I used the inner checkpoint fence to climb onto the lip of a nearby building, and then into a window in the third floor of the bookstore. The lights were off in the room, so I looked around and cleared the room quickly. Nobody was inside, so I motioned for Charlotte to stay put and wait outside. She nodded and I barricaded the door to the room from the inside with the headboard from the bed. Nothing could get through that door short of an explosion. I stuck my rifle out of the window and picked off 3 of the men standing around one of the fires, then moved to the next fire. I took out all of the men outside before any of them could shout more than "HEL-" The men inside all started looking around the outside of the building, searching for a sign of life.

"Hey! Is anyone alive out there?" One man shouted. The response startled me. Charlotte had climbed out of her hiding spot and started walking between the bodies, putting out the fires that they had been standing around with snow. It caused huge plumes of smoke and I couldn't see anymore from where I was hiding.

She spoke to the men inside. "I am!" she let out with a loud giggle.

I heard an argument from the second floor as a gun was cocked. "No. If anyone is alive out there, we can't just shoot them. If they killed our men, we need to get revenge." Charlotte laughed with a terrible ghostly laugh and then skipped off down the road, until she was out of sight.

One of the men followed her and yelled "Get back here!" and then he died. He fell to the ground as my bullet tore through his flesh. All the men inside began to talk and yell, all saying something different, but all just as frantic and upset. One of the men spoke louder than the rest.

He yelled "Defensive positions! Guard every entrance! Guard every window. I want nothing getting in. Nobody shoots at us and gets away with it!"

"He already has!" Charlotte's voice echoed around the building with a terrifying boom to it. She had to have found something to amplify her voice. The men all started yelling again and rushing about the building, getting into whatever defensive line they could manage. I waited for them, removed the headboard from in front of the door and walked into the hallway. I was in an apartment complex above the store. My silenced handguns in hands, I walked down the stairs to the back door of the store. It wasn't being guarded, so I slipped in unnoticed. I slit three of their throats before anyone noticed the first body. I had caused so much panic that walking around the place was simple. I just blended in by running and panicking like the rest, but then stabbing men through the heart left and right as they turned their backs. I was a god, just like I had told the man. A god of death. The first person noticed me when there was only about six people left alive. There were at least twenty dead by now and the bodies were scattered about like the stars, littering the night sky. The man who saw me first, yelled for help from his friends, but I put a bullet through his brain and ducked behind a bookshelf before anyone else could catch on.

"It's the ghost!" I heard one voice say as the remaining men gathered together for strength. I smiled mischievously and snuck closer to the group. They had moved themselves into a circle and all had their guns facing outwards. I moved as close to them as I could without being seen and then darted from my hiding spot into the open. I shot the two men who were facing my direction and the others caught just the glimpse of me disappearing again. Three left. I had run into a hallway with a closet, opened the closet door, then shut it softly again, taking a turn and running down the stairs to the bottom floor. There was nobody alive down there either. I ran to the other side of the building and back up the stairs. I saw the three men standing in the hallway, guns pointed at the closet and I shot two of them, leaving the smallest one alive. He put his hands up, facing away from me and dropped his gun. "Don't turn around. Don't look at me." I growled in my best Jigsaw voice. The man nodded. I walked towards him, making sure my footsteps were heavy and ominous. I laid a hand on his shoulder gently and pushed lightly down. He got the message and started to move to his knees. Before he got to the ground, he slid his foot back and attempted to knock me off my feet. I didn't flinch and made sure he made no contact with me, then grabbed his shoulder and turned him around roughly. "I was going to let you live." I sighed, then shoved my knife through his eye and into his brain. His other eye blinked and stared at me for a second. "Nobody sees my face and lives." I shrugged and tugged the knife back out. His life was over instantly after that. He dropped to the floor and I cleaned my now blood-caked blade. I walked out the front door and found Charlotte leaving up against an old cop car with its radio pulled out. The electronics didn't work, but the bullhorn without the amplifier still made an eerily loud echo. I grabbed all the bullets that I could and then walked my pretty girl back into the store, right over the piles of bodies. "I don't know if they have any, but if anywhere has stale bagels, it would be a coffee store. And if anyone is stupid enough to overlook stale bagels, it would be these idiots. Let's look." I started to dig through the cabinets of the small coffeeshop, pulling out everything that I could find. There was nothing there. I went to the freezer in the back room and it was empty as well. Only more human meat in there.

Charlotte waited for me on the counter of the coffee shop, dangling her feet over the edge, and looking damned adorable doing it. "How much does a pirate pay for corn?" She smiled at me.

I stopped her before she could say the answer. "A buccaneer." I said casually, refusing to laugh at the silly jokes.

"What kind of music do mummies listen to?" She said, sounding excited.

"Wrap music." I said without too much thought.

"What are you thinking of doing to me on this counter?" she said softer than the other questions.

I looked up at her and she blushed like crazy. Her smile turned from silly into seductive and she looked up at me from her toes with a needy smile. "I want to toss you over my shoulder and take you somewhere with a nice cozy bed." I smirked back at her. "And what do you want me to do to you, missy?" Her eyes widened. She obviously hadn't been prepared for the question in the slightest. She looked at her feet, then back at me and then hopped down from the counter in a dazed, but beautiful sweeping motion. She looked around, the blush still plastered on her face, and then walked away. I followed the girl as she walked out to the street again. We walked together slowly down the middle of the street

We walked until we came up to a small parking lot that was fenced in. The gate was open, so we walked around and looked for supplies. On a large wall near the theater that the parking lot was attached to, there was a slightly discolored poster of a model from before the world went back to the earth. It was a huge poster of the girls face, close up and personal. She was wearing lipstick and eyeliner and her hair was so clean and well brushed. If I hadn't been able to walk out of this world at any second and back into the world that poster came from, I wouldn't believe it was a real person. Living in this world where people struggled to survive other people and death was a part of life, its hard to imagine taking time to put on makeup in the morning.

Charlotte stood, looking up at the girl and then at herself in a reflection from a puddle at her feet. "What did she do to her face? She looks so smooth." She muttered, almost disappointed with the beautiful face staring back at her from the small puddle.

I reached an arm around her from behind and pulled her into my arms. "Believe it or not, smooth usually meant mean and heartless in the time that this meant something. I never met a girl in that heavy makeup without feeling insignificant. They are honestly just rude and mean most of the time and it's a little bit disappointing to see such beauty go to waste. With you, I feel comfortable. I feel safe and happy. I feel like I can protect you and you honestly want me to as opposed to the girls who dress up in makeup and give me sideways glances for admiring their work. You make me smile and you make me feel like I am worth more than just another guy on the street. That's why I keep coming back to this world. I don't do it for the fun of killing hundreds of men.. Although it is becoming quite the stress reliever. I do it because standing next to you makes me smile. I do it because looking at your face makes me fall in love all over again. I do it because I love nothing more than to spend all my time with you. And sometimes I wish that time would keep moving on the outside, so that I could properly measure just how much you mean to me in the hours I spend in this world with you. I love knowing that after a long day at work, you're waiting for me here and I love knowing that after flipping my car, being a complete wreck as far as the outside world is concerned, I can come here and be a god in the eyes of men. And even better than that, I can come here and be a good man in the eyes of the woman I love." I felt a tear roll down my cheek as I finished, still staring at the poster.

The salty drop of liquid rolled down my face slowly, then plopped onto Charlotte's head, soaking into her hair instantly and leaving no trace of its existence but the single line down my skin. She turned to face me and looked up at me. Her eyes filled to the brim with tears, and then she buried her face in my shirt, holding me close and squishing me around the waist tightly. I ran my fingers through her hair and smiled. This was the reason I chose this game. I wanted to show her the love that these characters shared. I wanted to have the chance to learn about her in an environment that pushes us to believe and trust in each other to make it to the end of the game. This one game was my favorite because of all of the trials that pushed the main characters together. Playing this game from the main character's point of view made this like the best kind of relationship building exercise ever known. I pulled her tighter in my arms and kissed her head. "You're more beautiful than that model will ever be anyways." I cooed. She sniffled and then nuzzled against my chest.

"I still want to know what a bagel is." Said a voice so soft I almost didn't hear it. I looked down at the girl and she looked up at me and through her teary eyes, she started giggling. Her eyes lit up in beautiful clarity under the light of the setting sun. The wetness reflected the light from the sky right into my eyes. I could see the stars in the depths of those beautiful green eyes. She was gorgeous. I let out a chuckle and then took her hand.

"Let's go then." I doted with a smile at the angel in my arms.


End file.
